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Episode 930 · Feb 26, 2024

How to Stop Chasing Happiness and Actually Create It

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George Wright III, host of The Daily Mastermind, has spent decades learning one of the hardest lessons in personal development: chasing success and happiness doesn't work. In this episode, he shares the evolution of his own thinking and the practical framework he now uses to build a genuinely fulfilling life.

The Three Phases of Chasing What You Want

For the first third of his life, George chased money. He started school at four, got married young, had twins, and hustled hard. He made good money. He got the house, the cars, the recognition. And it still didn't deliver the fulfillment he was looking for.

So he shifted. Instead of chasing money, he chased happiness and balance. He traveled, spent on experiences, made far north of six figures, and tried to build a lifestyle that felt good. But even then, the benchmark kept moving. Fulfillment stayed one step ahead.

It took a divorce, business setbacks, and some honest self-examination to bring him to a third way of living: one built not on chasing or engineering outcomes, but on attracting them through how you show up in the present.

Choose Happiness First, and Success Follows

George's first lesson is direct: choose happiness as your priority, because the money will follow. The reverse isn't true. Choose money, and happiness does not necessarily follow.

This isn't wishful thinking. It's a sequencing decision. When you orient your day, your choices, and your energy around what genuinely fulfills you, you perform differently, attract different opportunities, and build a life that sustains you rather than drains you.

You can't chase money and you can't chase success and achieve fulfillment.

How Happiness Works as a State of Mind

The second lesson is about the nature of happiness itself. George makes the case that happiness is not something you go and get. It's something you create, in the present moment, from within.

He points to a simple practice Tony Robbins uses often: recall one of your best memories. Close your eyes. Put yourself back in it completely. You will feel the happiness rise. That is not nostalgia; it is proof that you can generate the state at any time.

Happiness is a state of mind. It is a state of being in the present. It's not a past or future deal. It's a present deal.

You cannot look for happiness in the future. You have to create it now. That distinction changes everything about how you structure your days.

Why You Have to Fall in Love with the Process

Lesson three is the one George had heard from Gary Vee and others, but had to understand on a deeper level. It is not enough to tolerate the process so you can reach the result. You have to actually love the process itself.

If the only thing that truly exists is right now, then enjoying the now only as a means to a future outcome is still living in the future. The shift is to find something: a job, a skill, a hobby, personal development, and genuinely fall in love with doing it. Not because of where it leads. Because of what it is.

When you love the process, you do it more, you do it better, and you attract more success without forcing it. The doing becomes the reward.

Getting Grounded in the Present Moment

All three lessons converge on a single practice: being fully present in whatever you are doing right now. George admits this is the one he struggles with most, and the one he has made the most progress on.

Whether it is a phone call, a morning coffee, a task on your to-do list, or a conversation with someone you care about: when you are not actually in the moment, you are not enjoying it. You are not building the state. You are not loving the process. You are somewhere else.

Presence is not passive. It means you act, execute, and engage with full attention on what is in front of you. That is where happiness actually lives.

The Lifeline Exercise: How Much Runway Do You Have?

One tool George shares that can help you see your path more clearly is the lifeline exercise, which a mentor walked him through. You take a sheet of paper and write the year you were born down the left side, then every year after, all the way to 80 or 90. You mark where you are now.

Most people, when they are in a rough stretch, feel like time is running out. The lifeline exercise forces you to see how much runway you actually have. That perspective shift matters. If you have 20, 30, or 40 years ahead of you, the question is not how to recover; it is how to build.

Action Steps

  • Make a conscious decision today to prioritize happiness over money or achievement. The money will follow.
  • Use the memory recall technique: close your eyes, relive your happiest memory in full detail, and let yourself feel that state right now.
  • Identify one area of your life where you can fall in love with the process, not the outcome. Commit to it this week.
  • Practice single-focus presence: pick one activity today and give it your full, undivided attention from start to finish.
  • Do the lifeline exercise. Write out your years from birth to 90, mark where you are, and write what you want the rest to look like.

Whatever setbacks have brought you to this point, they are not the end of the story. George reminds us that your setback is a setup for a comeback. You have more runway than you think, and it is never too late to start living the life you were meant to live.

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

welcome back to the daily mastermind George Wright the third here with your daily dose of inspiration motivation and education hope you're having an amazing day I'm gonna turn down some of the music here in the in the office but I'm excited to talk with you today you know I mentioned this the other day and it's it really kind of blows my mind every time it happens I go to the quote of the day in the mobile app and it's after usually I have a couple thoughts I write down while I'm working out or something like that I want to talk about in the podcast. But the mobile app lately, the quotes are just right in line with what I want to talk about. So it's kind of cool. You got to check out the mobile app. We've got some really good picks and quotes that are in there. But the quote today is, success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm by Winston Churchill, a good guy for that quote, right? Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. So here's what I want to talk to you about today. I want to talk to you about stopping the chase or stop chasing success and happiness. Now, I know that sounds kind of weird, stop chasing happiness and success, but I want to give you just a little bit of straight talk on maybe some things I've learned in my life. I've definitely evolved in the way that I've approached success. And I want to talk to you a little bit about that because here's the thing. And you know what? Some of you may be able to relate to this. Some of you, it might just be great entertainment value. I don't know, but that's okay either way. But I want to talk to you about just sort of the evolution I've gone through in my life and just kind of discuss that a little bit because I've learned a couple of things. Maybe it can save you. Maybe you can relate to some of it. But you know what I found is, for the first third of my life, I really spent a lot of time chasing the money. You know what I mean? chasing the money, chasing success. And the bottom line is I was really good at it. Like I was really good at chasing success. I was able to make a lot of money. I was able to do a lot of things. A lot of people showed up in my life. I got a ton of recognition. I mean, I started school when I was four. My parents put me in a bilingual school. And so I kind of got on that fast track quick, got married out of high school, had twins. And, you know, I was just on that fast track to chasing money, chasing success. And I was really good at it. I still am actually. But the bottom line is you get the things, you get the house and the cars and stuff like that and the money and the lifestyle. And it just didn't really give me the fulfillment that I was looking for. And some of you know what I mean. I mean, you could be making a lot of money and not be fulfilled or you could be not making any money and still have some happiness and fulfillment. But chasing the money just seemed to not be it. So I went into kind of that next you know phase of my life And that next phase of my life I thought well instead of chasing money I just going to create happiness I just going to chase happiness right I going to create a happy fulfilled life And so I was able to travel and have lifestyle And you know I was making some pretty good money by then. I was making, you know, far north of six figures. And so I was able to buy nice things and have a nice lifestyle and do things I really enjoyed. but you know what and I had some great memories by the way but what happened was my benchmark kept moving up even though I was trying to create a life that was fulfilling a life that was happy rather than just chasing success you know I constantly kept moving the benchmark I constantly kept doing that and what happened was I realized that even having a happy kind of more balanced sustained lifestyle doesn't necessarily create fulfillment as well or, you know, in place of money. And then I had some things happen in my life. And, you know, I can kind of go into that and maybe a different podcast. That's not really the point of this one. But, you know, I went through a divorce. I went through some business changes. And, you know, I kind of really had to ask myself, what is it that I want? What's going on? You know, I spent a third of my life really chasing the money and success, thinking that's going to get me what I want. You know, do what most people won't so that You can live like most people won't or can't, right? And then just be happy and create happiness and things like that. And I thought that would work and it really didn't. And what I've found now, and this is the point that I wanted to talk to you about. What I found in my life is that I did this exercise. I'm going to digress for just a second here. I had a mentor partner of mine have me do this lifeline exercise. I don't know if you've ever taken out a sheet of paper. and down the left side of the paper, you write down the year you were born and then every year thereafter. So you could, I was born in 71 and 72, 73, 74, 75. So you go from age zero all the way up to where you're at now, right? And whether you're 20, 30, 40, whatever it is. But then you've got to extend that, right? Because you got to realize that people are living to 80, you know, I'm not saying everybody does, right? But people are living a long, longer life and they're living a longer life because of technology and health and things like this and so if you're going to live to 70 or 80 or some people 90 years old you got a lot of life left to live you've got a lot of time to still be able to build and see I'd gotten to a point where I was like ah man I'm so far in my life you know I've had failures in this and I'm not where I want to be and time's running out and you know what how do I start rebuilding how do I reinvent myself and what I I realize is I got a long runway left and none of us knows how long we have. But if you take the optimistic perspective that you have more runway left, it shifts your mindset a bit and you're willing to kind of restart, re-engage. And here's what I realize. You know we in a point in time right now especially where this COVID virus has kind of isolated a lot of people You need to look at this as an opportunity to reset your game reset where you're going. And I had done this just a little while ago because I had gone through some major, you know, setbacks, right? And I talk a lot about, you know, your setup is, your setback is not a setback. It's a setup for a comeback and whatever area of your life you're trying to do that in. And I'm in an area of my life right now that I don't have all the answers, but I definitely have learned a few things and I want to kind of share those with you. What I've learned is that you don't have to have all the answers and you can't chase money and you can't chase success and achieve fulfillment. And you can't just create a happy life. You can't just only choose to do things that make you happy. What you have to do is you have to learn to take advantage of that attraction principle and that take action and sit back and allow for attraction. And so I've learned a couple of things and this is what I've learned. Number one, you do need to choose happiness. You need to choose that as your priority because the money will follow. Whereas if you choose money, happiness does not necessarily follow. The second thing is that you have to realize that happiness is a state of mind. You can achieve happiness at any point in time. Just take, for example, a memory. Take one of your best memories you've ever had of being happy. Think about it. Close your eyes. Tony Robbins does this a lot. Really get into the moment of where you're at. and you'll start to feel that happiness. You'll feel how that feels and you'll create that state. You can create that state at any given time. So not only can you choose happiness, but happiness is a state of mind. It is a state of being in the present. It's not a past or future deal. It's a present deal. So you can't be looking for happiness. You can't be going to get happiness. You have to create a state of happiness. That's the second thing. The third thing is that, and this was a hard one, you have to learn to fall in love with the process. And I want to talk about that for a second because I've heard, you know, Gary Vee and a lot of other people talk about, you know, they love the process, got to fall in love with the process. And he said a couple things today on a podcast I heard, which is what triggered me talking about this concept. And what I've learned is that it's not just about saying I'm going to love the process of doing what I do so that I can get where I need to get. All right, I'm not going to just fall in love with making calls for my business so that I can create the results or fall in love with doing what I do so that I can have what I want to have. You have to actually love the process. It's not about the result and enjoying the process of getting there. It's about enjoying the process. You have to learn to fall in love with the process because if the only thing that exists is the now, then you have to love the now. You can't be okay with and enjoy the now so that you can get where you want to be because you're still thinking in the future. And this is the part that I kind of struggle with, I keep doing. But if you can learn you know if you choose happiness and then you create that state of happiness while you living your life and you can learn to fall in love with the process that the key It not just about attracting happiness. It's not just about choosing happiness. You have to learn to fall in love with the process of being, of growing, of developing and latch onto something. Maybe it is your job. Maybe it is personal development. Maybe it's growing. Maybe it's learning a skill. Maybe it's a hobby, but fall in love with that part of your process, your life, your moving, if you can learn to fall in love with that, you will attract more happiness. You will attract more success for sure because you're doing what you love. You're doing what you enjoy and you want to do it. And so if you can choose happiness, you can create that state of happiness more on an ongoing basis in the now and you can fall in love with the process, then what you have to do is you really have to get grounded in the present. And that's the thing that I struggle the most with, but I'm doing much, much better at. And that is in the moment, you only have one focus, right? It's whatever you're doing. And this could be the most mundane task. It might be the most important task. It might be that someone calls you and you're on the phone and rather than being focused on other things, you think you're in the present, but you're not focused on that person or that relationship or that thing that you're working on. You're not, and when you're not in the moment, you're not enjoying it, right? You're not enjoying the peace and quiet of sitting in the morning, you know, with a cup of coffee before you get going. You're not enjoying that little lunch break. You're not enjoying being on the job, making the phone call or talking with people. You have to learn to be, act, execute, and enjoy the present moment. And, you know, the rest of what I'm learning is still happening. So I think that's the key. You know, I went from learning how I was chasing success and happiness to trying to just live happily and balanced to now I'm in a mode of making the decision creating that state as much as I can and attracting that happiness attracting it because I'm enjoying the process and I'm loving what I do and I love how I do it and you know what's crazy success is happening like crazy like things are happening in a great great way and so I hope if there's anything there it might give you some ideas some suggestions to learn that chasing success is not the key and chasing happiness is not the key. You've got to learn to create that state, that decision, that state of mind, attract it into your life and fall in love with the process. And when you do that, I think you're going to enjoy life. You're going to enjoy things. You're going to have more success and you're going to have more happiness. So I hope that helps you as I learn. And as I grow, I'll do the same thing. I'll kind of give that feedback back to you. So that's my message for today. Have an amazing day, have an amazing weekend. And I'll look forward to talking with you again on Monday. This is George Wright III. This has been The Daily Mastermind. Have a great weekend.

About the host
George Wright III, host of The Daily Mastermind

George Wright III

George Wright III is an entrepreneur, investor, and the host of The Daily Mastermind. Over more than two decades he has founded and scaled several multimillion-dollar companies and built a renowned seminar business that put some of the world's biggest names and brands on stage. With 25+ years across marketing, sales, and executive leadership, he's made a career of turning bold ideas into results — and momentum into lasting growth.

Today his mission is singular: empower driven entrepreneurs everywhere to master their mindset, unlock their potential, and live their ultimate destiny. Through The Daily Mastermind, George shares the Prosperity Principles and strategies that help people create massive change — in their business and in their life.

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