For better or worse, life is filled with struggle and challenge. We, as humans, were built with a wide emotional range and often experience a variety of feelings, both joyful and painful ones. Nevertheless, we are bombarded with the message that one’s life goals should be a constant state of happiness; that the pursuit of happiness should trump all. The problem with this goes back to that first sentence, life is filled with struggle and challenge. And it’s normal for us to experience hardship. Good for us in fact. But when we have the misbelief that life should always and only be happy we can end up comparing our current position to a false and manufactured ideal.   LESSONS: The Happiness Hoax: Ascribing to the misbelief that life should be all happy, all the time. Struggle, challenge, and hardship are a part of life. Stop judging your own position against a false ideal that is impossible to achieve. Remember, the struggles that you encounter are there for a reason and are no measure of how capable you are of living a fulfilling life.   SUBSCRIBE: Apple Podcasts: http://bit.ly/SpartanUpShow YouTube: http://bit.ly/SpartanUpYT Google Play: http://bit.ly/SpartanUpPlay   FOLLOW SPARTAN UP AND DR. L: Spartan Up on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/spartanuppodcast/ Spartan Up on Twitter https://twitter.com/SpartanUpPod Dr. L on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/drlarapence/   CREDITS:   Production Team: Heather Knox, Knox Creative; Marion Abrams, Madmotion, llc. Host: Dr. Lara Pence Synopsis: Dr. Lara Pence   © 2019 Spartan