I Have Everything I Want. Why Am I Still Not Happy?

You got what you wanted.

Maybe you have a good job or enough money to live comfortably. Maybe you have a spouse, children, a home, friends, or the freedom to live pretty much the way you want.

Maybe you accomplished goals you once thought would change everything. And yet something is missing.

You may even call it happiness.

But perhaps what you are really looking for is peace or peace of mind.

The ability to wake up in the morning and be okay with your life. To not continually need something else to change. To not have your mind constantly working on the next problem, the next goal, the next thing you need, or the next thing that might go wrong.

You thought you would have that by now.

So why don’t you?

You Believed Something

There is a belief hidden inside the question.

If you are asking, “I have everything I want. Why am I still not happy?” then at some point you must have believed that getting what you wanted would produce it.

Maybe you never put it into words.

But it may have sounded something like this:

If I can get my life the way I want it, I will finally be okay. I will be satisfied. I will have peace of mind and live in the enjoyment of what I have achieved.

That is not a foolish belief. In fact, much of what we hear throughout life seems to support it.

Get a good education.

Build a career.

Make enough money.

Find the right person.

Buy a home.

Raise a family.

Become financially secure.

Do something meaningful.

Find yourself.

Be yourself.

Follow your heart.

Create the life you want.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with any of those things. Many of them are good things. But somewhere along the way, we can begin believing something more than that they are good. We can begin believing they will give us peace.

And that is a different claim.

Where Did You Get That Idea?

You may not know.

Most of us have beliefs we never consciously decided to believe.

We learned things from our parents, from teachers, friends, churches, books, movies, television, advertising, psychologists, celebrities, social media, and the people around us.

Then there are our own experiences.

Something works once, so we decide that is how life works. Something hurts us, so we decide what we must avoid. Something makes us feel good, so we pursue it again.

Over time, all of this becomes part of the way we understand life—our navigation system.

We use it to make decisions about where we should go, what we should pursue, what we should avoid, what will make us happy, what will hurt us, what is important, and what isn’t. Most of the time, we probably don’t even think about the beliefs underneath those decisions. We simply follow the directions they give us.

But a navigation system is only as useful as the information it is working from. If some of that information is wrong, we can faithfully follow its directions and still end up somewhere we never intended to go.

That is why asking where a belief came from matters.

We may never stop and ask where a particular belief came from. It simply seems true. That matters because our beliefs create expectations.

If I believe money will give me security, I expect to feel secure when I have enough money.

If I believe the right relationship will make me whole, I expect to feel whole when I find the right person.

If I believe success will make me feel significant, I expect achievement to quiet the question of whether I matter.

And if I believe getting my life the way I want it will give me peace, then eventually I expect peace to arrive.

But what happens when it doesn’t?

What Did the Belief Promise?

This is where your question becomes important. You are not asking, “How can I get what I want?” You are saying:

“I have what I wanted. Why didn’t it do what I thought it would do?”

That is a very different question. And it deserves more than another list of things to try like…

Maybe you need a new hobby.

Travel more.

Exercise.

Practice gratitude.

Set another goal.

Find your purpose.

Spend more time with friends.

Simplify your life.

Some of those things may help. Some may be very good advice. But notice what can happen. You came asking why the things you pursued did not produce what you expected, and the answer can easily become:

Here are some more things to pursue or, worse, “keep going and it will come.”

Maybe the problem is not that you haven’t found the right thing yet. Maybe there is another possibility.

What If the “Things” Aren’t the Problem?

Suppose you bought the house you always wanted and still don’t have peace. Does that mean there is something wrong with the house?

Suppose you have a good marriage and still sometimes feel restless or dissatisfied. Does that mean you married the wrong person?

Suppose you built a successful career and discovered success did not make you feel the way you expected. Does that make success bad?

No.

Perhaps we have been asking good things to do something they were never capable of doing.

A relationship can provide companionship, love, intimacy, and shared experience. Money can provide choices, security from certain problems, and the ability to meet needs. Achievement can provide accomplishment and opportunities. A home can provide shelter, comfort, and a place to build a life.

But where did we get the idea that these things could produce lasting peace of mind?

That is the belief worth examining. Because your outcome has already given you some evidence. You got what you thought you needed. And something is still missing.

Maybe the Question Goes Deeper

There is another assumption underneath all of this that we rarely examine.

I know what I need to make my life okay.

Think about that for a moment.

We spend much of our lives deciding what we need, pursuing it, getting some of it, losing some of it, changing our minds about some of it, and discovering new things we want.

What you were certain would matter at twenty may not matter nearly as much at forty or sixty.

Things you desperately wanted sometimes turned out to be disappointing.

Things you once feared losing may have disappeared, and somehow you survived.

We change.

Our circumstances change.

Our desires change.

Our understanding changes.

And we do not know what tomorrow will bring.

Yet we can spend our lives depending upon ourselves to determine what will finally make everything okay.

Maybe that deserves examination too. Not because there is something wrong with you, but because every human being has limitations.

We do not know everything.

We cannot see the future.

We cannot control every circumstance.

We cannot fully control other people.

Sometimes we do not even understand why we want what we want. So perhaps the surprising thing isn’t that we occasionally get it wrong. Perhaps the surprising thing is how much confidence we place in our ability to know what will finally give us peace.

What If Peace Comes From Somewhere Else?

That question does not prove anything.

It does not prove that your beliefs are wrong.

And it certainly does not prove by itself that God is the answer.

But it does open another possibility.

What if peace of mind does not come primarily from arranging life the way we want it?

If that possibility is true, then getting more, achieving more, controlling more, or finding the next thing will never completely solve the problem.

Something else would have to change.

For thousands of years, people have offered answers to that question.

Philosophers have offered answers.

Psychologists offer answers.

Religions offer answers.

Christianity offers an answer.

And they do not all say the same thing.

That alone should give us reason to consider whether the answer we have been living by deserves another look.

So we do not have to accept any of them simply because someone tells us to. But neither should we dismiss them without examination.

If what we have believed has not delivered what we expected, perhaps another explanation deserves consideration.

That doesn’t require us to abandon everything we believe. It only requires enough openness to ask:

Why do I believe what I believe?

Where did I get those beliefs?

What did they promise?

What have they actually produced?

And perhaps most importantly:

Is it possible that peace comes from somewhere I have not been looking?

Maybe the problem isn’t that you haven’t gotten enough of what you thought would make you happy. Maybe what you believed would give you peace was never capable of doing it.

That doesn’t mean everything you pursued was wrong. It may simply mean that some of the beliefs you were using to navigate life were pointing you toward something they could not actually provide.

If so, perhaps the question is no longer:

“What else do I need?”

Perhaps it is:

“If the things I thought would give me peace cannot give it to me, where do I go from here?”

That is where we will go next. Before looking for another destination, it may help to understand the navigation system we have been using all along—how it developed, how it directs us, and why we need one in the first place. Because even a life that has gone very well can still leave us asking where to go from here.

Before looking for another destination, it may help to understand the navigation system we have been using all along—how it developed, how it directs us, and why we need one in the first place.

This is the first of three connected articles exploring this question. In the next article, we will examine the navigation system we have been using all along and begin to identify what has actually been directing us.