Are your goals making you unhappy?

People are happier when their goals are aligned, meaning their short term goals lead to the achievement of their long term goals.

(If your short term goal is to be a great poet and your long term desire is to be a billionaire I’m really not that surprised you’re miserable.)

Via Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom:

The psychologists Ken Sheldon and Tim Kasser have found that people who are mentally healthy and happy have a higher degree of “vertical coherence” among their goals—that is, higher-level (long term) goals and lower-level (immediate) goals all fit together well so that pursuing one’s short-term goals advances the pursuit of long-term goals.

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