Personal Development Guide - Authorify

To further illustrate this, think about when you go to the grocery store while you're hungry and your eyes are bigger than your stomach. When I go to the grocery store and I'm hungry, I buy everything — the snacks, the cookies, this and that. Then, I bring it all home and half of it goes bad or gets stale before I ever eat it because I was thinking with my eyes, while my stomach cannot actually put all that food away. Obviously, we're all different, and we're all going to have different goals in life. So, it really comes down to you and your personal desires — which is why I keep saying, is it worth it to you? Are you willing to do the work? Are you being honest with yourself? Count the cost, reverse-engineer the goals, and see if it all makes sense for you. Remember that nothing worth having comes easy. Remember to Avoid the Hedonic Treadmill. Perhaps you’ve heard of the hedonic treadmill. I initially learned about it in a documentary on Netflix called Happy, which I highly recommend, by the way. The documentary talks about how people try to buy their way to success by buying the car, the house, the stuff, thinking they're going to reach happiness, and then, they end up getting discouraged because they don't reach happiness and it doesn’t make life that much better. Those endorphins only last for a short amount of time. For years, I had the personal goal of buying a house close to the beach. When I finally achieved the goal, it felt great. But within six months to a year, the excitement wore off. That's why you see so many people buy their dream home and sell it within a year or two. They get discouraged and move on because it did not give them what they were looking for. Ensure Your Goals are Intrinsic, Not Extrinsic. Want to avoid the hedonic treadmill as much as possible? Ask yourself whether your goals are aimed to better yourself or just to keep up with the Joneses. An intrinsic goal is something that will make you feel better as a person, while an extrinsic goal is something that simply fuels competition in society. Examples of Intrinsic Goals Let’s take a closer look at the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic goals. Here are a few examples of intrinsic goals — these will improve your life and your sense of self, but are not related to material goods or your appearance within society.