Happiness isn’t about achievement. It’s about alignment.

When you know how to align your daily actions around your ideal goal, you experience more joy and purpose on a daily basis.

What happens in your brain after you achieve your goal?

When we set out to accomplish a goal, our brains set up a reward system using a neurotransmitter called dopamine. This chemical gives us the energy and motivation to go do those goals and makes us feel good as we pursue it.

But what happens after that goal is achieved?

The dopamine reward system is no longer needed, so it shuts down. Your brain recognizes that the finish line is crossed, so there is no more need for the structure that motivated you to get there.

The low after the high

This is why the anticipation of Christmas can feel more magical than the actual day of Christmas. It’s why planning for a vacation can be even more energizing than the vacation itself. It’s also why Olympic athletes are struggling with depression and suicide, why the mid-life crisis exists, and why we keep buying into the lie that the grass is always greener somewhere else.

Stop buying into the lie that happiness is on
the other side of achievement.

Goal setting works, but only until the goal is accomplished

Many people are familiar with concepts like setting S.M.A.R.T. goals and breaking large goals into smaller more manageable steps to get things done.

These systems are very effective in helping people set goals and work toward them, but as long as our internal systems keep breaking down those dopamine reward systems as soon as the goal is achieved, we will keep buying into the lie that happiness is living just out of sight over the next hill.

woman siting outside journaling in a noebook

The I GOT This Framework

At The Ideal Life, we teach a framework of goal setting that brings in a higher goal than winning a gold medal at the Olympics, being a billionaire, or any other achievement you can accomplish in your lifetime.

The ultimate goal is The Ideal.

I - Ideal

The ideal is the fixed, unmoving star that every other pursuit in your life revolves around. It is the impact and legacy you leave in the world long after you are gone and the perfect picture of the kind of life you want to lead. You will learn how to identify your ideal and how to structure your other goals – regardless of how lofty or small they are – to be in alignment with your ideal.

G - Goals

Goals come in a lot of shapes and sizes. Some are things you can do within the next 3 months, but others might take the rest of your life to accomplish. The key thing here is that each goal is aligned with your ideal. This brings deep purpose to accomplishment and keeps the dopamine reward system intact even after accomplishing what you set out to achieve

O - Objectives

We teach you how to break your larger goals into smaller objectives that can be accomplished in a matter of weeks. The goal is always to align your smaller actions with your larger vision and to have systems of visual feedback so you know you are making progress on the things that matter. Many task organization systems live in this world, so you may find this the most familiar.

T - Tasks

Tasks are the things we do each day that get us closer to our objectives. Being able to see that the actions you are doing today perfectly align up with the ideal image of who you want to be and the impact you want to have on the world means you can experience happiness, joy, and a deep sense of meaning every single day of your life as you pursue that ideal.

THIS

Once your Ideals, Goals, Objectives, and Tasks are all aligned, the “THIS” is whatever comes next. Many of us fill our task lists with things in the “THIS” category and try to cross them off as fast as we can like a game of whack-a-mole. With a dopamine reward system always intact, you will find you have a “spillover effect” that has a consistent level of motivation for whatever “THIS” is in your life.

“There’s no such thing as perfect. There’s only the relentless pursuit of perfection.”

– Tom Brady