Studies have shown that happiness is measured by progress. To answer the question, ”Am I successful and happy?”, people review their lives to see what they’ve accomplished and achieved. And often times, people are turned off by their answers because they are not where they have envisioned themselves to be. They do not have the financial freedom that they imagined they would have, the relationship they would be in, the body they desire, or just little goals they hoped to achieve.

However, people rarely pause to ask themselves, whether or not they are measuring progress with the correct measurements.

Society teaches us to measure progress through monetary means. But, that’s wrong; progress should be measured by the number of lessons learned and knowledge acquired. When it comes to starting a new business, embarking on a new journey towards self-discovery, beginning a new relationship, etc, regardless of it working out or not, you’ve progressed if you’ve taken something from it.

There's such a thin line between success and failure. The only thing that differentiates the two is one's perception. A situation or outcome is only negative when you choose to see the hurt and pain as the bigger picture. You can take situations that were not to your expectations and perceive it as lessons learned or failed attempts. I’m sure we’ve all heard that gratuity is an essential ingredient to happiness and it’s not wrong because we get more of what we focus on.

If we focus on what great abundance and joy we have, we will naturally see more good in the world.

The real devil at hand is knowing that the lack of progress was due to untaken action. The stress of not doing what should have been done is what gets people down. People tend to conclude that stress arrives from an overwhelming amount of work. But the truth is, stress stems from not taking the necessary steps towards achieving your dreams.

To end it, I wish everyone a beautiful new year. May we shift our perception towards happiness, find more love in simple things, break free of societal pollution, and put goals into action.