Happiness This Very Second

When was the last time you felt like this little boy?

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When was the last time you felt like this little boy?

I’ve spent the past 20 years worrying about money. Worrying about what other people thought of me. Worrying about relationships, love, loss. Awkward about people, places, things, agendas Agendas. Thinking about the people who were angry at me. Obsessing on the people I was angry at. Scared to fail. Afraid to adventure. Thinking I had to achieve goals to alchemize unhappiness into happiness. Thinking I had to be the smartest person in the meeting, the room, the building, the city, thinking that the only way to I could ever be HAPPY was to get away far away far far away from HERE just so I could get THERE in the land of the “goals”. In the land of the “motivations”. In the land of “success”.

What a waste.

Now I hear the birds chirping, its not yet 5am. If I can picture it for a second – being a young boy, smiling, I have my bread. Picture what is in the eyes of that boy. Picture those are your eyes. Feel that moment of flight through the air, society hasn’t yet given me my orders, my goals. I’m free to run, to enjoy, to relax. Yesterday is long gone. Tomorrow will never come. I’m happy today, with my bread, with my smile, with both feet flying in the air. Like a bird. Like nothing I’ve ever felt before. For the briefest of moments happiness is the absence of everything that has happened to me ever since. Thought Catalog Logo Mark


About the author

James Altucher

James Altucher is the author of the bestselling book Choose Yourself, editor at The Altucher Report and host of the popular podcast, The James Altucher Show, which takes you beyond business and entrepreneurship by exploring what it means to be human and achieve well-being in a world that is increasingly complicated.