Making Happiness A Habit – Learning To Find The Small Wins In Financial Planning & Beyond

Learning To Find The Small Wins In Financial Planning & Beyond

Whether you’re living for the weekend or counting the days until retirement, we all know delaying happiness in the hope that “the next big achievement” will deliver it is no way to live.

Yet, we’ve all done it. How many days have you completed everything on your daily to-do list, only to receive 30 minutes of peace at the end of the night – if that – before the cycle repeats? We hold it together, just trying to make it to the next moment of peace because we want so badly to reach our goals and create the life we’ve always imagined.  Wrapped up in the determination to achieve more, we end up sacrificing those daily moments of happiness for the promise of a perfect “one day.”

What if there was a way to keep achieving more while still finding joy in the present moment? That’s right – we’re talking about making happiness a daily habit, too. “The reason we are so hooked on getting things done is that we believe the payoff that comes from achievements – an award or a larger savings account – will ultimately lead to the biggest payoff of all: happiness,” wrote Emma Seppälä of Time Magazine. “But it doesn’t.” So what actually leads to happiness?

“When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy,” wrote James Clear, a habits researcher and author of Atomic Habits. “You can be satisfied anytime your plan is running.”

That means, when your habits and plans are in place, you can relax knowing everything is going according to plan. You can focus your attention on making happiness a habit.

Here are a few simple tips to help shift your focus from the product to the process:

• Immerse yourself in the present by focusing on one task at a time.
• Take a moment of gratitude for everything you have, before you focus on achieving more.
• Celebrate the small wins. It’s all about perspective.

At Vance Wealth, we embrace these small, but powerful, mindset shifts every day. We find happiness, knowing that each day we are moving one step closer toward the ultimate goal. But here’s the crucial part: We have the roadmap so that we can enjoy the journey.

We can find happiness in each small step because we already have the clarity of knowing it will take us to where we want to go. And that is incredibly freeing.

“When we meet with a new client for the first time, the first words out of their mouths are always: ‘We should have done this years ago.’ Why? Planning is freeing,” explained John Vance, President and Visionary of Vance Wealth in Santa Clarita. “By giving you a clear direction and a system to measure your success, you’ve freed up so much mental and emotional space. Your questions are answered. Your next steps are clear. All you have to do is keep following the plan to feel satisfied with small steps and daily progress. Simply having that plan written down will create a new sense of peace and happiness – because it gives you a framework to understand where you’re at and where you need to be, at all times.”

That’s why we know it’s possible to make happiness a habit. In fact, we see it every day.

Ready to put your big-picture financial plan in place and start making happiness a habit? At Vance Wealth, we offer an initial consultation free of charge. Book online at https://vancewealth.com/book-an-appointment/. Together, we can help you find happiness while achieving more.

Vance Wealth, Inc. (“Vance Wealth”) is a registered investment advisor. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Vance Wealth and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. The information provided is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice and it should not be relied on as such