Keeping It Straight

What you must do instead is realize that what you have been doing is not the problem, it’s the why. You thought that doing important or impressive work will make you happy. This was precisely wrong. It’s that being happy will help us do important and impressive work, quite possibly better and more pure work.

What you are looking for – satisfaction, immersion, absorption, completeness, meaning, whatever – does not come from the task or the situation; it always comes from your approach to the task or situation. It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it. You need to learn to be fully present, to disconnect your happiness from the task