Why happiness fails as a life goal

I’m not sure if it’s because I’m over forty, but I’m really struggling to drop my holiday weight. In the past, I would make a few adjustments in January, and in a few days, I would be back to my pre-Thanksgiving size.

Not this year.

And this year, I’m actually trying. I’m making goals and having a plan, but things are not turning out the way that I want.

Now, I believe goals and plans are important and helpful. But I also have experienced that sometimes, our hyper-fixation on a particular outcome can be self-defeating. Often the more we try to pursue a very specific result, the farther we get from our destination.

This can happen in many different areas of our lives. We want to get healthy so we pursue training and diet. But sometimes we find ourselves so fixated on weightlifting that we overtrain and undermine our results. Or we are so fixated on eating correctly that we are always thinking about food, and so we overeat.

Viktor Frankl famously said something similar about pursuing happiness:

“For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.” (Frankl, A Man’s Search for Meaning)

Instead of fixing our eyes on success, wealth, health, and happiness, we need to pursue something greater.

Jesus said, Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:33)

In other words, make your life about something much more meaningful than your own gratification. Instead, do all that you can to focus and participate in Jesus’ kingdom and all the right things you can do in his name by his power, then all these other things will come as a byproduct.

God did not make us for selfish pursuits.

He made us to live for a higher purpose.

For the Glory of God and the service of others.

I’m going to keep trying to get to a healthy weight, but more importantly, I’m asking the Holy Spirit to lead me to seek God’s kingdom, even when I’m eating. If I do, all these other things will fall into place as well.