Have the Happiest Year of Your Life Part 3: Dr. Nancy and Beth Caldwell on having both success and happiness.

Does Success Cause Happiness? Dr. Nancy and Beth Caldwell Have the Answers

By Dr. Nancy Mramor

Does achieving goal setting cause happiness? Yes and no. Setting the goal causes happiness and reaching the goal causes happiness, but what happens in between may not! Have you ever set a goal to accomplish something and never reached it? What happens between setting and reaching the goal is the reason why people don’t make it to the finish line with goals. And happiness is reportedly lower during the process!

It may be because the work required to set the goal was too challenging or difficult. Moving through difficult tasks is not the most pleasant part of reaching a goal. Whether you decide to increase the profit on your business by 15% or take more time to relax, the challenges required to make those goals happen may bog you down and keep you from the fulfillment and happiness of completion. Mastering this part of the goal-setting plan is the most important one because without mastery at this level you will never get to the finish line.

Beth Caldwell is a master at setting and reaching goals and today she will share with you her expertise on the process. My job is to get you over the hump so that Beth’s plan can work for you.

Ask yourself the following question to increase the likelihood that you will reach your goal:

Are there parts of me that want to complete the goal and others that don't?

Remember when you were a kid riding the bus to school? And all of the days when everyone worked together and you arrived safely and on time? Maybe you even shared part of your lunch with a friend and she gave you the charm from her cereal box? But just behind those memories are the other days when the bus was late, people were fighting on the bus, or it broke down? What if you ARE the bus and everyone on the bus is you? What if the Bus is your vehicle to peace, happiness and success? Or to breakdowns and getting stuck in neutral? We are a whole person with our successes, fears, quirks, health problems, loves and preferences. But we often don't feel whole because parts of that self are not in agreement with other parts, much like the children on a bus. Part of you wants to write a new resume and search for a new job, yet another part finds 100 reasons to read or bathe the dog instead. Part of you wants to finish reading this book, while another part gets intimidated with prospect of facing parts of the self you don’t like and finds ways to stay on the phone too long. Imagine that you are not just one person but are like a committee riding on a bus. The committee works together, sometimes disagreeing, sometimes agreeing, other times quitting or not showing up at all. Imagine that sometimes one person on the committee dominates, and wins the others over much to the success of the group. But another time, the dominating member drives the bus right off of the road into a ditch where you feel stuck and unable to move toward your life?

We want to achieve happiness, peace, prosperity and love in our lives and yet we sabotage ourselves and berate ourselves afterward.  There are three parts of the self right there! Your optimist plans for a great day, your saboteur keeps it from working out the way you want and the critic gets down on you for not being strong enough to wrestle the saboteur to the ground.

So how do we get a great committee on the bus and drive it straight toward our goals for happiness and inner peace?  Think of a feuding committee.  How can they come to a consensus and follow the guidance of the committee chair?  They talk it out, polish up their skills, transform, compromise, work through problems and accept everyone’s opinion in the end, even if they disagree.

As so will you.  Listening to the needs of the whole self, finding out where they are coming from accepting them and getting all of them on the bus driven by your highest spiritual self is possible.  And it may even be more fun than you ever realized.

What do I need to do to accomplish this goal?

Is what I need to do too much to realistically complete and do I need to rewrite the goal so that it is attainable?

Do I have landmarks along the way to tell me that I have accomplished 10, 25, 50% of the goal?

Do I have built-in acknowledgements and mini-celebrations to commemorate landmarks on the way to completion?

When the going gets rough, do I have ways to reduce the pressure and stress that can occur along the way? (See List of Resources)

Do I have supports (people, websites, books, internet access) to bring me to the goal or do I need to get these first?

NEXT: Beth Caldwell's Article: The Professional Women's Guide to Setting and Achieving Goals

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