Welcome to the happiness podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Puff. Years ago, when I was just finishing up my doctoral

work and I was starting my career, some guy approached me. I don't remember who he was, but he approached me and said,

hey, can I sit down with you and talk about your investments? I thought, well, that sure

can't hurt. I'm starting up with my career. How could it hurt to learn about investments?

Mind you, I didn't have any money saved and I had a bit of debt left over from college.

But during that time when we talked, he explained to that if I had saved a little bit of my income every month

That when I retired I could have a very good nest egg and wouldn't have to work anymore and be very comfortable

And mind you the advice he was given me was very good, and throughout my career I have tried

to apply it.

But there was a part of it that wasn't very good for me. I mean I was just starting my career at the

very inception and I began to think about how many years out there I could retire and have all

this free time to do whatever I wanted. I mean it sounds I could

be a bit of all this free time to do whatever I wanted.

I mean, it sounds silly now, but at the time, it actually caused me a bit of distress

because what happened was, instead of focusing and on enjoying my career, I started spending some time thinking about, I can't wait to retire.

Now mind you, there's nothing wrong with looking forward to retirement, but we can look forward to vacation.

We can look forward to a lot of things,

but if that keeps us from living in the here and now

and enjoying what we're doing right now,

then it is a problem, and it's going to lead to

unhappiness right now. One of the problems is we spend a lot of time thinking

about the weekend, we spend a lot of time thinking about, I can't wait until I

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