How A Recovering Self-Help Junkie Finds Contentment

After asking all the wrong questions and looking for answers in all the wrong places

Jason McBride

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All illustrations by Jason McBride

Humans ask questions. We are an irrepressibly curious species. Some of us are also neurotic and keep asking the same two questions over and over again:

How can I be more productive?
How can I be happier?

The truth is, these are both the same question.

The reason you want to get more done in a day is that you believe it will lead you to a financial or emotional payoff. The emotional payoff is happiness, and the financial payoff is you can afford happiness.

All of the other typical self-help topics can also be reduced to a quest for happiness, often by way of financial prosperity.

We want to be thinner, healthier, and better at this or that skill because we think that will finally make us happier. We want to make friends and influence people because happy people have friends.

You probably feel like an incomplete jigsaw puzzle and are searching for the missing piece that is a perfect fit to complete you.

But the secret to happiness is that happiness is not a destination. What you really want to feel is contentment, and contentment comes from…

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Jason McBride
Jason McBride

Written by Jason McBride

Freelance Writer & Illustrator | Poet & Visual Essayist | Amateur Human | https://weirdopoetry.com/ Hire me: https://bit.ly/3NNft4Y

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