Learn to enjoy your pursuit.
"Dopamine is not about the pursuit of happiness, it is about the happiness of pursuit." ~ Dr Robert Sapolsky
So true.
So much of life and enjoyment is about the anticipation of things coming. In fact, the anticipation is often actually more enjoyable than the experience itself.
Tim Ferriss used to book week-long holidays years and years in advance so he could get as much enjoyment out of the anticipation as possible. This puts a new perspective on "it's not the journey, it's the destination."
There actually is no destination.
Each arrival at a destination simply marks the beginning of another journey toward the next destination.
Morgan Housel told me that when he went on holiday recently, after months of planning and organising to get there, he finally arrived, and one of his first thoughts was "wow, we should totally come back here next year. It would be great if we could come back next year."
So literally DURING the supposed enjoyment of "the destination," Morgan was captured by the allure of the next "journey".
How absolutely tragic, and hilarious.
The dangerous thing about anticipation is it can cause us to look over the shoulder of the present moment, to always see what's coming next so we never actually experience what is happening right now.
This anticipation and dissatisfaction will drive you to do many amazing things. But they're things which you're risking never being present for and essentially forgetting about them during the experience of them.
One potential solution is to make sure you find ways to enjoy your pursuit.
Micro-celebrations, miniature wins, lots of little victories along the way.
Create as many destinations to enjoy the anticipation of as possible.
Chris Williamson | @chriswillx