Growth over happiness?

I've noticed a new trend in professional and marriage advice: choosing growth over happiness. While I wholeheartedly believe in and encourage continuous improvement, I've got a PSA to make on this topic. You don't need to sacrifice happiness for growth - you can and should choose both. In fact, it's essential! Here's why:

- There is no trophy to win at the end of your life for deferring happiness in favour of growth - whether it's financial or personal. Your only reward comes in the present moment - so if you can't choose happiness now, you probably won't be happy later. Which leads to my next point. 

- If you’re waiting for happiness to come as a consequence of growth, you’ll be forever waiting, because at which point will you have done "enough" growing?

-Putting off happiness, even for something as noble as growth, is actually an indicator that 1. you're living out of fear and insecurity that you're not good enough and 2. you have a scarcity mindset, so you don't believe you can have both growth AND happiness. 

-Growth is change and transformation, so while it is an inevitable part of life and should be embraced when it comes, the point of life is not to constantly seek it.

- Your life is now. Happiness is to be fully present in the moment, without regretting what was or expecting what will be. This means there is value in accepting, enjoying and loving where you are, who you are and who you’re with. 

- The reality is, while you can grow from pain and adversity, struggle and challenge, (also referred to as post traumatic growth) the best sort of growth comes from acceptance and discovery, creativity and inspiration. So growth and happiness actually go hand in hand.
- Happiness is not only circumstantial. It is also a skill you can learn, cultivate and practice: through gratitude, relating, contribution, presence, meaning - thereby linking it to growth.

Bottom line: we were made to be happy, to be joyful, to laugh, to have fun and to delight in this short life. We seem to have forgotten this in our quest to succeed. The best measure of your success is in fact, happiness. Because no matter how far you go, or how much you grow, it's what you feel in your heart that keeps you going. When you're living in alignment with your values and your soul's calling, you naturally feel happy. 

If you're struggling with the choice between growth and happiness, my advice to you is choose happiness and commit yourself to growing there.