Neither money nor poverty makes joy

Jerry: Abraham, there‘s a saying that money doesn‘t make for a happiness. But on the other hand, I have noticed that poverty doesn’t make for a happiness either. But still it’s obvious that money isn’t the path to a happiness. So, if the idea of achieving something does bring us happiness, does that mean that the achievement is an appropriate goal for us to set? And how does a person maintain his or her feeling of happiness when reaching one’s goal is taking a lot of their time and energy? In other words, it often seems that it’s a sort of uphill climb to reach the goal, and then there is a short plateau of rest, but then an almost immediate tedious climb to achieve the next goal. In other words, how does a person keep all of the climbing toward their goals joyous, so there is not that struggle, struggle, struggle, and then, “Wow, I’ve made it!”, and then struggle, struggle, struggle, and, “Oh, here, I’ve made it again!”?
Abraham: You‘re right, money is not the path to happiness, and, as you‘ve observed, poverty
certainly is not the path to happiness either. It‘s so important to remember, that when you offer any action for the purpose of achieving happiness, you’re truly going about it in a backward way.
Instead, use your ability to focus your thoughts and words toward things that cause you to feel
better and better, and once you’ve deliberately achieved a state of happiness, not only will
wonderful actions be inspired, but wonderful results must follow.
Most people give the majority of their attention to whatever is happening in their experience right now, which means, if the results please them, they feel good, but if the results do not please them, they feel bad. But that’s really going about life the hard way. If you only have the ability to see what-is, then things cannot improve. You must find a way to look optimistically forward in order to achieve any improvement in your experience.
When you learn how to deliberately focus your thoughts toward good-feeling things, it’s not
difficult to find happiness and maintain it even before your goal has been accomplished. The feeling of struggle you were describing happens because of the continual comparison of where you are right now in relationship to the goal you’re reaching for. When you’re constantly taking score, noticing the distance that still needs to be traveled, you amplify the distance, the task, the effort, and that’s why it feels like such an uphill struggle.
When you care about how you feel, and so you choose thoughts on the basis of how they feel, you
then develop patterns of thought that are more forward looking. And as the LOA then responds to those better-feeling thoughts, you get more pleasing results. Struggle, struggle, struggle never leads to a happy ending. It defies Law. “When I get there then I’ll be happy” is not a productive mindset, because unless you’re happy, you can’t get there. When you decide to first be happy, then you’ll get there.