CHASING HAPPINESS
Welcome to The Small Jar, a podcast where we explore how to intentionally design the life that you want in the space between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 10.
Hello, friends. Last weekend, I got back from the British Virgin Islands where I had an amazing time with my family. I want to paint a picture for you of how wonderful this vacation was, but bear with me, I have a point.
And it's not to brag about vacation or to make you feel jealous, I promise. So here goes. My family and I spent a week together on this beautiful private island resort.
We had virtually nothing to do but eat, relax, read, go out on the swim, occasionally visit the gym, and ultimately just be together. The water was a perfect crystal blue, like the type of crystal blue where you can see down to the bottom even where the water's 50 feet deep. There are private deserted beaches everywhere.
It's a boater's paradise. Around the corner of every island, you find beach bars and waterfront dining. And although we were there during spring break, the place wasn't crowded at all.
With a very few exceptions, we were able to let go of our responsibilities at home for a while. We spent every meal together. We went snorkeling.
The boys went scuba diving. I went to the spa twice. It was heaven.
So that's a summary of all of the Instagram-worthy experiences from my trip. And the vacation was absolutely all of those things. But as much as I was happy and at peace and feeling wonderful during many parts of the trip, there were times when I felt sad and disappointed and frustrated and even angry.
I share this not because I want you to feel sorry for me. I mean, boo-hoo, you were on vacation on this beautiful island, right? You were sad. Stop it.
I mean, seriously. I wouldn't blame you if you were thinking, I wish I was on that perfect vacation. But that's the thing.
When you plan a vacation, you often imagine it's going to be so much better than your real life. You think I'll be happier, more peaceful, living in the moment. You imagine how much fun the trip is going to be, spending time with a family, exploring a new place.
You imagine it's going to be perfect. You look forward to the trip. You cannot wait to get away.
Often we imagine that it's better there than here. We do that with a lot of things, don't we? For example, when we were younger or maybe even now, we may be thinking, when I find the lifelong partner, I'll be happy and fulfilled. When I lose the weight, I'll be happier and more confident.
When I get a better job, I'll be happier. I'll feel more appreciated. If my boss would just stop being so awful, I'll feel more successful and happy in my job.
When I meet new people, I'll feel less lonely. If only my circumstances could change, I could finally be happy. It's hard to convince ourselves that it wouldn't be better, right? Like, how could life not be better if you were on an island with crystal blue water and 80 degree temperatures? How could it not be better if we had more money, lost the pounds that we had been wanting to lose forever? It's hard not to believe that if our circumstances could just change for the better, particularly if that change involves something that we've been wanting for some time, that we would be happier.
When I go on vacation, I'll finally get to relax. When I get promoted or land the higher paying job, I can finally stop worrying about money and feel professionally successful. When I find the man of my dreams, I'll feel loved and have someone to cherish me.
Here's the thing, we do find it easier to think a little bit differently when our circumstances change. When it comes to vacation, we take time off work. We might travel to a different place.
Our circumstances change and we give ourselves permission to think that the stresses of our day-to-day lives won't follow us. We typically can let go of work commitments and there's no house to clean or errands to run on vacation. We get a bit more unstructured time.
You envision that you'll be able to let go of the stress and welcome in more of the joy and peace while you're on vacation. And this anticipation of happiness makes you look forward to the change in circumstances even more, makes you look forward to the vacation because we imagine that that is when we'll get to feel happy and relaxed, as if we never feel happy and relaxed in our regular lives. Or maybe it's just that we get to anticipate during vacation we'll get so much more of it, more happiness, more peace and relaxation.
So my husband and I planned this great trip and I've mentioned before we really planned intentionally because we want to create these amazing experiences with our kids before they leave for college. It just feels like we have to make the most of the time we have together while they're still living at home. So I'll admit what I envisioned when I thought of the vacation was not just a beautiful beach and freedom from the stresses of the day-to-day, but also maybe even more so, I imagined creating beautiful memories with my family.
Long dinners talking, adventures snorkeling, sharing laughs on the beach. So here's what's funny now that I think about it. My kids' version of a perfect vacation probably would not include spending 24 hours a day with their mom.
I'm not saying they weren't looking forward to it, but going into the vacation we probably had very different perceptions about what would make us happy on vacation. I have to backtrack and tell you a funny story about how the vacation started. We had chartered a sailboat and my husband is a boater and he was confident that he could captain the boat.
So it was just going to be the four of us on this 40-foot sailboat for eight days. My husband grew up doing these charters with his family in the BBIs and for our entire lives together he shared countless stories about how much fun he and his family had. He and I spent part of our honeymoon on a slightly larger boat in the BBIs and at the time, because it was our honeymoon, we splurged and hired a captain and his girlfriend, who was the cook, to take us around the islands.
It was incredibly luxurious, but even still it's a bit of an adjustment to live on a sailboat. The space underneath where you sleep is relatively small and this time it was going to be just the four of us on a smaller boat and we were going to be in charge of all of it. The sailing, the navigating, the mooring, the cooking, the cleaning.
But we were all game. The boys had never experienced living on a sailboat and although I was a little nervous about the logistics, I had bought into the promise of the fun memories we would create while living together in close quarters on the water. So the day before we left we got word from a friend that the government and the BBIs was cracking down on charters and that we might want to check to be sure everything was okay with our reservation.
So my husband calls and can you believe the person who answered the 1-800 number or whoever he called said, yes sir, your charter's been canceled. At the time I was somewhere else in the house and I just heard yelling. My husband, needless to say, was seriously angry.
When I found out what happened I was a little shocked. Honestly for a week I had been worried that the thing that would put our trip in jeopardy would be that one of us would test positive for COVID. Since we were flying internationally we had to produce negative tests before arriving in Tortola.
So my brain literally had to reset like okay I'm no longer worried about COVID. Now we don't even have a place to go. So we learned that we were one of hundreds of groups whose charters were canceled because of these new government regulations which required new documentation for every boat in the BBIs.
And as the rumormen would have it there was one sole woman processing all of the regulations for every boat. I heard some families actually had unpacked all of their belongings and provisioned their boats and were literally kicked off of their boat. I guess it was some small consolation that we were 24 hours out and hadn't yet made the trip.
But of course we still had non-refundable plane reservations and there was the not insignificant factor that we were all seriously looking forward to going away to a tropical paradise and all of a sudden we learned our plans just fell through. So while this was all going on I was still ferrying the boys back and forth to Walgreens to get our COVID tests and while we're waiting in line I started researching all of our options and somehow found a one-bedroom suite on this private resort off of Tortola which was somewhat comparable in price to the charter that was canceled. The second we confirmed the charter was a no-go.
I booked the room. I was literally imagining 300 other groups scouring the internet for rooms and I was not going to leave it to chance. But the point of the story is this our circumstances drastically changed.
We were originally planning an eight-day excursion on a sailboat navigating the beautiful waters of the BBIs and exploring all of the islands anchoring or mooring somewhere different every night and then the trip changed so that we would be staying on land at one beautiful resort for all eight days. Now let me take a moment to acknowledge as I say this neither option sounds terrible. Much better than the circumstance that our trip was canceled altogether right? But nevertheless my husband's initial feeling about this change in circumstance was anger which slowly turned to disappointment as he realized that what he imagined was going to happen on our trip was no longer in the cards.
In contrast my boys were relieved. When we talked about it later they admitted that they weren't quite sure what it would be like to be trapped. Okay they might not have used those exact words but in essence stuck on a boat with their parents for eight days straight.
They couldn't imagine the living arrangements or really what they would do all day. Both had been less than thrilled to not have access to a gym for an entire week. So the news of the change in circumstances for them was that they felt relief.
For me the circumstances changed to being on a resort island and I was absolutely thrilled. As much as I was willing to believe that being on an adventure with the boys for eight days on a boat would lead to some incredible bonding experiences. I also felt a little stressed about having to manage the provisions, keep everyone fed, and a small kitchen organized and tidy with grown boys eating all of the time.
That's really no self-heat. I worried about the tight living quarters and I also worried that the boys would be bored. In contrast a resort I could imagine.
No cooking or worrying about meals. Plenty of space for everyone to choose to be together or have time on their own. No seasickness.
Ultimately living on a boat is work and I was happy and also a little bit relieved that I was taken off the hook. So the four of us faced the same change in circumstances with totally different emotions ranging from anger and disappointment to relief and happiness. The reason I'm explaining all of this is to demonstrate that it's the way we perceive our world that creates our emotional reality.
We perceive the circumstances of our lives through our own individual lens based on what we want and how reality compares to what we thought it should be or what we wanted it to be. So often we blame our feelings on the circumstances of our life. Like we'll think he hurt me because of what he said or I was disappointed because of what she did.
The circumstance in this case was our charter was canceled. My husband felt anger, my boys felt relieved, and I felt happy. So how could we all have experienced totally different emotions if the circumstances were the cause of our feelings? The answer is that we each interpreted what those circumstances meant for us very differently.
There was the circumstance, charter is canceled, and we each had very different thoughts about that circumstance and therefore we had very different feelings about what that circumstance meant for us. So for my husband, his thought was probably something along the lines of, I can't believe they ruined our trip. My boys were thinking, thank God we're not going to be stuck on a boat with our parents for eight days.
And I was thinking, thank God I'm not going to be cooking and cleaning up a boat for eight days. Our thoughts created our feelings, anger, relief, joy. Needless to say, my husband quickly got over his anger and was excited to make the most of our trip once we had our room booked.
Although I will say his initial disappointment did motivate him to make an extra effort to plan some really special things for us to do while we were away together. So even though the specifics of our vacation had changed, we were still on vacation. We were no longer at home in the 30 degree spring weather going to school and work.
So in this sense, our circumstances changed from the everyday routine at home to eight days on a beautiful resort island. But remember what I said before, the circumstances do not determine how we feel. Being on vacation does not create happiness.
The point is important, so I want to reiterate it. My husband, boys, and I all had different thoughts about the change in circumstances from the boat to the resort. Our thoughts created different feelings for each of us.
The circumstances were the same. It was our interpretation of those circumstances that created our emotion. So now we go on vacation, we're all in the same place.
And we're so used to assuming that if our circumstances change to include a vacation, that we'll feel happy and relaxed. I mean, that's why we go on vacation, right? But just the change in scenery isn't enough to create a positive emotional experience. Even though we left many of our responsibilities at home, we brought our minds with us.
And our minds continue to work whether we like it or not. Think about a time when you were in a beautiful place or having an incredible experience that you had looked forward to for a while. Imagine you were in the midst of this experience and there are parts of it that are perfect and that you wish would never end.
And then there are the other parts, the parts that don't quite match up to your vision of how it was supposed to go. For me on the vacation, it looks something like this. I wish he would get off the phone.
The boys aren't talking to us at dinner. They're not having a good time. Leading up to vacation, I imagined this beautiful bonding experience where my family would be happy and connected all of the time.
The reality looked a bit different to me. Or more to the point, my perception of the reality, my perception of the circumstances made me feel different than I thought I would. I imagined sitting at dinner with the boys laughing and talking and connecting every night.
And we did. But we had over the course of the eight days, call it 30 meals together. And some of those meals, my boys just didn't talk much.
To be really clear about the facts, let's say 12 of the 30 meals, the boys didn't talk. Here's what I found myself making that mean. I thought, I wish they would engage more with me.
They aren't enjoying themselves. They don't want to be with us. Of course, when I thought about the circumstance of them not talking at dinner in this way, I felt sad and maybe even frustrated.
I had an image of how this vacation was supposed to go and my boys weren't following my manual. Was it true that they didn't want to be with us? I mean, maybe. They were with us 24-7.
Maybe they did want a break every once in a while. Was it true that they weren't enjoying themselves? Maybe sometimes. I don't think over the course of the whole vacation, they weren't enjoying themselves.
The point is, I saw my boys not talking at some of our dinners and I created this whole story in my head that caused me to feel sad and frustrated. And here's the problem. When I think my boys aren't enjoying themselves and I feel sad, I begin to harass them to talk.
I repeatedly ask them what's wrong. I act annoyed. And guess what happens? They really don't enjoy themselves at dinner.
I don't enjoy myself. My husband doesn't enjoy himself. All because I interpreted my boys' silence as a problem.
Throughout the vacation, there were moments when I felt pure joy and peace and bliss. And there were other moments when I felt disappointed and anxious, frustrated and sad. I want to offer you that it actually doesn't even matter what the circumstances at the time were because it wasn't those circumstances that caused any of those emotions for me.
As I said, my husband did an amazing job of planning some pretty incredible experiences while we were away. And one day he planned a trip to take the boys scuba diving for the first time. Now I'm a certified diver, but I'll be honest, as I've gotten older, I get less and less excited about taking risks.
Sometimes I wish that wasn't true, that I was a little more adventurous because I feel like it would give me a chance to spend more time or quality time with my sons. But this time I let myself off the hook. Their excursion would take them off island for most of the day.
So I booked myself a 60 minute facial and a 90 minute deep tissue massage at this spa with beautiful views overlooking the water on a high cliff. Two and a half hours of pure relaxation and bliss. I was finished around noon and then I walked down to the beach to relax.
I had lunch delivered to me at my beach chair. I read, I journaled, I meditated. I did exactly what I wanted to do.
That in and of itself felt like pure heaven when you're used to being in charge of everyone at all times as a mother. I had no one to worry about, but myself. Okay, I'll admit that I worried a little bit about the boys being safe during diving, but I trust my husband and I knew they were with an experienced dive master.
I trusted it would all be okay and I didn't let that worry consume me. So I had this delicious opportunity to just take care of myself. I found myself struck by how at ease I felt.
I mean, at this point, I'd been on vacation for four days and so one would think I'd be totally relaxed by that time. But walking to the beach alone, I was struck by how much more at peace I felt in that moment, like a weight had been lifted. Here I am on vacation and I realized I'd still been worried about something or holding on to some negative energy that I only really noticed once I had a moment to be entirely still and present with myself.
I found myself breathing a deep sigh of relief and asking what was I holding on to before that I didn't even realize was there. As I looked inward, I recognized how much I was holding on to the thought, I want the boys to have a good time. I want to have this amazing experience with them and the subtle connected thought that it wasn't happening the way I envisioned it.
Here I was in this beautiful place and my mind was interpreting the experience as not good enough because I thought my boys weren't having a good time. They didn't really want to be with me. The realization was powerful for me and not just because I had clearly been holding on to this negative emotion, this worry, because I had this unexamined expectation about how the vacation was supposed to go, but even more it made me realize if I'm holding on to this negative emotion in paradise and that the paradise itself doesn't create the happiness, then what am I holding on to in my regular life that's keeping me from happiness every single day? If the vacation doesn't create joy, then certainly I shouldn't wait to capture joy on those rare occasions when I can walk away from my everyday obligations.
On vacation and since I've been back, I've been taking time to recognize the impact my lens has been having on my emotional experience with my children. I started to see how often my boys do engage with me, how often they do talk and laugh and open up to me on their terms. While we were away, we had the space to have some important conversations that we could never find the time to have amidst the hectic schedule of our lives and some of those conversations, while difficult, forged even deeper bonds in my changing relationship with my boys, who've grown up to become young men seemingly overnight.
I started to more deeply appreciate all of the ways the vacation was perfect and even smile when my brain offered me thoughts like, I wish he would get off the phone. The thought had only created negative emotion for me before, but as I questioned it, I recognized all of the ways the reality of my life was already perfect, exactly as it is, whether it's the way I envisioned it or not. Happiness isn't something we have to chase.
It's right here, right now, right in front of you and it exists along sadness and disappointment and anger sometimes. The circumstances of our lives don't create these emotions for us. I want to invite you to stop chasing happiness.
This is a practice. Our minds will always offer us thoughts that bring us pain. We can't always control what our minds offer us as the knee-jerk reaction to our circumstances, but as we practice recognizing the difference between our circumstances and our interpretation of those circumstances, we begin to gain mastery over our emotional lives.
And here's the even better news. If vacation doesn't create happiness, why do we wait for it to allow ourselves to feel relaxed and happy? What is it that you're waiting for? What circumstance are you hoping will change so that you can allow yourself to be happy? If you'd like to learn more about how to do this, to stop chasing happiness and recognize that it's in your grasp right now, I invite you to connect with me. Schedule a session to learn more.
Stop chasing happiness, my friends. Until next time. Thanks for listening to The Small Jar Podcast.
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