Become Happier Right Now by Releasing the Need to Achieve!

Today you are living in a constant stream of what success is supposed to look like and constantly being bombarded with what are your greatest achievements and the question: What have you done with your life?

Success is something that is quite different for each person, as are their achievements. It is meant to be different as are we all with our very own little quirks, skills, and differences. It is what makes the world go round, giving each of us a reason for living.

What happens when you allow these perimeters to engulf your life? You will always feel like:

• You are not good enough
• You haven’t got enough
• You haven’t done enough

You will constantly be working to meet what you think or believe to be other people’s expectations and perceptions of you. This will lead to unhappiness, depression, anxiety, and even to the great sadness for many, suicide.

Your life is a lifelong process of learning, changing, and growing to become the person you want to become, not what someone else expects or you think expects from you. Releasing the need to constantly achieve will allow you to take a step back to firstly enjoy where you are, and to be happy with where you are, and the people who are in your life.

5 steps to release the need to achieve

Releasing the need to achieve isn’t about never having accomplished, succeeded, or achieved anything in your life. Releasing the need to achieve is about removing the external influences placed on you of what may be unrealistic or not relevant to you. No truly great person ever began with the need to achieve; you’ll often hear them saying things like, “I never expected this to happen”. It is about following your desires, following your goals, and most of all, being happy with you and who you are.

1. Gratitude: Be grateful for each little aspect of your life. It has been a constant reminder to me throughout the years that until you are grateful for who you are, where you are and who you are with, you will not move forward. When you become grateful, the flow of life becomes much easier.
2. Push past your comfort zone: To push past your comfort zone doesn’t mean to do things that bring about harm or necessarily discomfort. It is bringing into place a belief in yourself that you are good enough, and deciding if what you are wanting to do will compliment the life that you have now. So if it is learning a new skill, meeting a new friend, or taking on a new task that you know will provide you with a feeling of satisfaction and joy, then go ahead.
3. Replace negative thoughts with positive ones: Negative thought processes come into play every day of your life. The thought that you aren’t achieving enough or doing enough is just one of many negative thought processes. This is where having a goal or a plan for your day with 2 – 3 things that are important to you and your life to do is important. It helps prevent you from getting into the negative thought process that you haven’t achieved enough. At the end of the day when you have completed the 2 – 3 priorities you had in place you will feel happy with yourself, giving you the courage and confidence that you are good enough.
4. Remain focused: Ensure that your reasons for doing things remain in alignment and focus with what you truly value, what you believe is your purpose, and the vision you want for your life--the type of person you want to be and how you want others to see you, not how you think they should see you. If people don’t love you when you are poor, they aren’t going to love you any more when you are rich; they will just pretend they do.
5. Keep it simple: All in all, life is pretty simple. To be happy can be as simple as having a roof over your head, a warm bed to sleep in, food to eat, and genuine people to love and who love you. The rest you just make up as you go.

Don't forget to stop and smell the roses!