Have you ever wanted to walk around with a constant sense of lasting joy and confidence that allows you to fulfill your wildest dreams? Of course you have. All you have to do is swap fake happy for real happy.
Instead of defining what each means, I’ll explain with a tasty hypothetical example 😋.
Fake happy - I plop down on the couch after a grueling day of writing and devour a (large) bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream as my reward. The sugar rush gives me an instant hit of sweet satisfaction. Immediately followed by a hit of existential guilt.
Real happy - I stand guard at Trader Joe’s and refuse to allow the ice cream to ever enter my cart. Opting for the organic blueberries instead. And the next time I want something sweet after a long day, I’m left with a bowl of berries instead.
Derek Sivers calls this shallow happy vs. deep happy. I call this fake happy vs. real happy. It all boils down to the ability to think long term. That sense of lasting joy and confidence is available to you if you are willing to exchange instant gratification (fake happy) for long term thinking (real happy).
The best way to summarize this is in eight simple words bestowed upon us by Jerzy Gregorek: Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.
Now a real life example, perhaps one you can relate to?
College me from 2014. Let’s call him Armando. He was a different breed than the man who stands before you today. Some would say he was more beast than human. That’s hard for him to deny.
It’s the middle of fall semester and a cool Thursday night would roll around. Armando would come to a focal point at 7:00 pm that offered two paths: fake happy or real happy.
Fake happy was the “easy” choice. Go bar hopping in downtown Athens, Georgia (the undisputed best college town in America) and stumble home alone after another unsuccessful attempt to woo a beautiful Georgia peach to the roach infested loft at approximately 2:52 am, shoes covered in bar tar and shirt covered in ketchup stains (after inhaling the mandatory late night hot dog). Which led to a few restless hours of tossing and turning, wondering where my pick up lines went wrong, before opening my crust-filled eyes. Transforming from a feeling of fake happy to real hung over as I shuffled along to Spanish class at 8 am.
Real happy was the hard path less traveled by Armando and his fellow amigos. Go to the library and complete all of his assignments for the week. Practice his past tense verb conjugations for the Spanish test tomorrow morning. Eat a healthy dinner from the dining hall. Lights out and eyes closed by 10:00 pm while being rocked to sleep by the fist-bumping EDM music blasting from the club below the bedroom (shoutout Jerzees).
Which do you think resulted in an aced exam the following morning in addition to a clear head and a stain-free shirt? I’ll let you decide.
Let’s just say the Armando who took the real happy path was confident enough to walk the streets of Mexico without a translator. More importantly, he proved to himself that he could increase his knowledge about anything. All it took was embracing a little short term suck a pinch of long term thinking.
You have faced this same situation in your own life even if you never went to college. Haven’t you?
The struggle is finding the proper balance of these two opposing forces - fake happy and real happy. The solution is not to eliminate all present fake happiness in exchange for the hope of future real happiness. It’s a battle that we face day in and day out.
But our society pumps us up with an endless supply of fake happy opportunities thanks to advertising, media, and politicians. If you refuse to acknowledge this fact, then you will continue to blindly stumble down the fake happy path forever more.
The real happy moments lie hidden in plain sight. You just have to peek through the brush of fake happy branches to see them.
Real happy comes from showing up to the gym and getting after it every single day for five years. Because you get to look in the mirror at that sexy hunk who you sculpted day by day, month by month, year by year.
Real happy comes from turning down those happy hour invites to go home and work on that creative project that has no guaranteed external reward but ends up becoming your life’s most meaningful work.
Wherever you are willing to embrace the short term suck there is potential for long term pleasure. Fake happy vs. real happy.
When all is said and done, would you rather have a truckload of fake happy moments or a handful of real happy moments?