There’s nothing unsuitable with wanting one thing extra for you life, and by extension, searching for extra happiness. However as neuroscientist Tara Swart M.D. tells mindbodygreen, that state between “being” and “changing into” could be a very sad state, as a result of all you are centered on is the truth that you are not but the place you wish to be. 

Say you had been to visualise a Venn diagram, as an example, the place one circle is your current self and the opposite is your excellent self. “If these circles sit fully over one another, then clearly, you are residing your finest life. In the event that they’re overlapping however not a lot, or they’re fully separate from one another, then that hole is a supply of unhappiness, as a result of it is a give attention to what you want that you have not achieved but,” Swart explains.

And while you give attention to that hole, that discordance between who you’re and who you wish to be, “you do not acknowledge you small wins or achievements alongside the best way, and also you simply preserve transferring onto the following or greater factor,” Swart says, including, “and that may create a state of lack in your mind.”

Bestselling creator Morgan Housel, who launched Similar As Ever: A Information to What By no means Adjustments this previous yr, echoed this level on a current episode of the mindbodygreen podcast, noting, “What actually issues to your happiness shouldn’t be your circumstances; It is the hole between your circumstances and your expectations.”

As he explains, in case your definition of success will increase with each aim you obtain, you are by no means actually glad. The important thing, then, is to simply accept the truth that bettering your circumstances will not lead to lasting happiness. Handle your expectations, nonetheless, and you may probably really feel content material, Housel says.