What Matters More: Personal Growth or Happiness?

1. Personal growth is pain.

1.1. Happiness is a feeling of comfort and joy with your present circumstance or collective lot in life.

1.2. What makes us happiest in life is the attainment of something difficult that really was a powerful journey of personal growth.

1.3. You profit most in life by doing things that you previously couldn’t do and pressing into the pain that holds you back

1.4. Happiness is a state of mind that is achieved after we have very often walked through the fire and refined ourselves.

2. Personal growth

2.1. Leads you to feel fulfilled. You want to be ever-improving and growing

2.2. Will lead you to experience the roller coaster of emotions, highs and lows, ups and downs and everything in between

2.3. Leads to bad days; feeling like you’re doing the wrong thing; it’s imperative in these moments that you press on!

2.4. Means being happy- and being unhappy at times. Both positive and negative emotions are essential to the process of growing

3. Pleasure

3.1. The good stuff, the real, tangible results, and outcomes that you actually want, are on the other side of pleasure.

3.2. Happiness is often offered to us in disguise in the form of temporary pleasure.

3.3. Personal growth is long-term — and lasting.

3.4. What is pleasure?

3.4.1. More money

3.4.2. Doing things you want to do

3.4.3. A greater feeling of status and self-worth

3.4.4. The feeling of status among peers (comfort in your own skin)

3.4.5. Feeling of achievement

3.5. When we’re thinking short-term, then this pleasure can be ephemeral.

3.6. When we think long-term, we may not always experience pleasure during the process.

3.7. The lasting benefits of the pleasure we worked hard for outweigh the temporary pleasure that we didn’t work as hard for.

4. Pain

4.1. What is pain?

4.1.1. Experiencing negative emotions that can lead to loss of sleep, anxiety, stress, worry, and doubt

4.1.2. The feeling of insecurity — at times, impostor syndrome

4.1.3. Wondering if you can cover the bills

4.1.4. Feeling like you’re letting yourself down, and perhaps even your family

4.1.5. Discomfort and fear of the unknown about what will come next

4.2. If you're not growing, all the luxuries wouldn’t lead to long-term happiness.

4.3. If you're not living your true calling, there will be pain

4.4. And as bad as it feels in the moment, it’s a hell of a lot worse if you just ignore it.

4.5. The pain won't let you grow and will lead you to mediocrity.

5. What matters more?

5.1. Are you willing to endure some pain to get to the core of who you really are?

5.2. Are you willing to do the work?

5.3. Personal growth hurts and is tougher than just being and finding happiness. But it’s always worth more in the end.

5.4. You get to live life on your terms.