My biggest insight about happiness did not come when my life was going exactly as I had hoped. I was not sitting on a tropical beach with a piña colada, and I had not just landed a promotion.
No, it came when I collapsed on the kitchen floor.
An eye-opener about happiness, right when things were hard
A few seconds earlier I am still standing at the counter. I lift the kettle and think: did someone put stones in this?
Then my hands start to tingle. My arms. My legs. Black spots drift across my vision.
And before I know it, I am lying on the floor.
I cannot move. I cannot speak. I think: help, is this it?
And what shocked me most is this: I was okay with it.
I was 21. And had been ill for more than ten years. I was not living, I was surviving. On hold, until I would be better.
Then I am lifted up. My father carries me to the sofa. And there I decided something. I am not going to wait until I am better. I am going to look for happiness now. With this body.
We wait for happiness
Maybe you are thinking: this is far from my life. I hope so too, because I would not wish a moment on the kitchen floor on anyone.
And yet. That waiting itself, I come across everywhere. In every room where I speak, with people whose lives are simply ticking along.
Once this project is done, then I will really take a break. Once the reorganisation is behind us, then it will be fun again. Once we hit the numbers, then we will celebrate. Once things calm down after the summer, then I will pick it up again.
Sounds logical. But when I then ask what happened once that previous project was finished, it goes quiet for a moment. Because there was already a new project.
That is how once, then works. You put your happiness in the waiting room, and that finish line just keeps moving along with you.
Wonderful becomes… normal
Think back to something you really wanted. That job. That house. That one trip you saved up for months for. And you got it.
How long did it feel wonderful?
It goes a bit like a new phone. In week one you show it off. A month later it is just 'your phone'. And in my case, one with a crack in it.
I found that out in an unexpected way myself.
Twenty-year-old Ank dreamed of one thing: a life without illness. Getting out of bed after eight hours of sleep, rested. Getting dressed to do something that did not take place in my bedroom. Looking in the mirror and thinking: I am looking forward to today.
And years later that dream came true.
Was I happy? Yes. And yet there came a moment when simply getting up became normal. Bizarre, right. Something I had dreamed of for half my life was suddenly normal. And my mind immediately came up with new signals: you can do more. Travel, build a career, write a book.
That is called hedonic adaptation: your brain gets used to what you have. In the beginning something new feels wonderful, but your system automatically shifts back to normal. And before you know it, you are already looking for the next thing. Just one more step. Just one more milestone. Then you will have made it.
So you are not ungrateful or impatient. You are just waiting for something that, this way, never comes, because that finish line always keeps running a little ahead of you.
Get started: from later to now
What you need: two minutes, a pen and your calendar.
Write down your once, then sentence. The one you think most often. Start with: once… then…
Look at what comes after that then. What do you actually want to feel there? Rest, pride, time with the people you love, space in your head?
Find the very smallest version you can already do this week. Not that far-off holiday, but half an hour in the sun without your phone. Not the team outing in December, but cake at Thursday's meeting.
Put it in your calendar. With a time attached, otherwise it becomes an once, then again.
Do you lead a team? Try this exercise out loud in your meeting. Ask what everyone is waiting for, and what of that is already possible this month. You will hear things you would not otherwise hear.
Happiness is not in once, and not in then
I went looking for happiness. And you know what I found? Nothing grand, nothing special.
Happiness lives in small, 'ordinary' corners. In things we secretly already know. We just often do not do them. Because, you know, things need to calm down first.
But that very waiting is what holds happiness back.
Which once, then are you going to tackle this week?
Love, Anke
P.S. By the way, I am still not on that tropical beach with a piña colada in my hand. I am at my kitchen table, with a cup of coffee and my laptop. And that makes me over the moon!