Every January, in the winter wonderland of northern Michigan that we call home, ski season kicks into high gear for our family. Four to five days a week, we are at the ski hill getting exercise and fresh air.

Our girls love skiing. Our twins, now seven, and our eldest daughter, now ten, have been on skis for the last five years. They’re adventurous and love speeding down the hills.

One of the questions we were asked most often before moving to northern Michigan was “What about the winters?”

What about them? It’s one of our favorite times of the year because we can play in the snow.

We have the opportunity to engage in new and exciting experiences all year long, for which we’re grateful. New experiences are integral to our happiness.

As a young comedian, Jerry Seinfeld hung a big calendar on his wall. He began writing jokes every day. After he wrote, he put a big red X over that day.

According to Seinfeld: “After a few days you'll have a chain....Your only job is to not break the chain.”

Seinfeld didn’t resolve to become a great comedian. He challenged himself to write every day.

See the difference? It’s not just semantics.

Challenges are action oriented whereas resolutions are outcome oriented.

With a resolution, you think about who you want to become. With a challenge, you become that person through the consistent action you take.

You may have heard the parable about the old Cherokee who is teaching his grandson about life: “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil—he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”

He went on, “The other is good—he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you–and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson considered this and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee replied, “The one you feed.”

In 1944, a 39 year-old Austrian man named Victor Frankl and his wife Tilly were processed into the Auschwitz concentration camp. He spent approximately 18 months in the shackles of the Nazis being shuttled from one camp to another, before being liberated by American soldiers. Frankl survived the Holocaust, but his wife, mother, and brother did not.

Despite suffering such great trauma, Frankl went on to become one of the most important and influential neurologists and psychiatrists of the twentieth century. In fact, it was the experience of spending time in captivity, experiencing suffering and deprivation, and watching some prisoners transcend their circumstances while others succumbed to them, that set Frankl on a path to explore life’s meaning and develop a renowned technique called “logotherapy” to help those in need overcome difficulty. Frankl’s big insight, which surfaced at his lowest moment, was gained by observing the resilience of humanity, and teaching others how to find meaning in life even in the harshest of conditions.

Frankl wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” The search for meaning, Frankl believed, is the primary motivational factor of humans.

I recently finished the first draft of a new book I’m writing. Almost every moment spent writing this book, like previous ones I’ve written, has been tedious and arduous. It wasn’t enjoyable. But completing the draft made me happy.

The same goes for every race I’ve run. Every challenging project I’ve completed. Every difficult conversation I’ve had. I didn’t really enjoy doing any of these things. But I’m happy for having done them.

Conversely, I’ve spent hours binge watching television. I’ve eaten way too much food in one sitting. I’ve scrolled endlessly through social media. Doing these things gave me comfort in the moment, but merely satisfying my impulses in this way has rarely brought me happiness.

What these experiences of mine illustrate—and I’m sure you’ve had similar ones—is that there is a difference between comfort, on the one hand, and happiness on the other.

That which brings us comfort in the moment often erodes our contentment over the long term. That which requires stress and struggle is often the most satisfying. It’s the paradox of happiness.

So much of life is spent on auto-pilot. Years pass by, then decades. The more time passes, the more we lose sight of who we wanted to be, and the more we accept who we’ve become, despite the gap between our expectations and our realities.

We recognize the dissonance, but explain it away because the dreams of our youth are, we believe, impractical. It’s not realistic or responsible—and may even be selfish—to harbor, let alone act upon, deeply held desires for something more out of life, right?

In a recent episode of “The Tim Ferriss Show” podcast, Tim asked his guest Dax Shepard the following question: “if you had a billboard...to get any message, word, or image out to billions of people...what might you put on that billboard?”

After a few moments of deliberation, Dax answered: “Be as kind and forgiving to yourself as you are to the people you love.”

Wow. This one hit close to home for me. I’m my own worst critic. I internalize mistakes. I try to put on a happy face for others, but get caught up in my own head. I don’t often lash out. However, I frequently lash in.

Henry was a bright student and attended Harvard, where he studied Greek, Latin and German. After graduating, he wasn’t sure what to do next. After a period of drifting, he founded a school with his brother, but the venture failed a few years later.

He subsequently met a mentor who introduced him to Transcendentalism, an idealistic philosophical and social movement. Henry began to think deeply and write about what it means to live a good life. Still a young man, Henry decided to retreat from the city—its noise and distractions—to live and work on land owned by his mentor outside of Concord, Massachusetts.

Henry, as you may have guessed, is Henry David Thoreau. His mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson. In his masterwork, Walden, Thoreau describes what led him to pursue a simpler existence:

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

“Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions.” — Elizabeth King, Sculptor

I hear it all the time from people: “I’m not creative.” Because I’m an introverted, generally non-confrontational person, I simply nod in response. If I was bolder, I would say: “How do you know? If you never engage in the act of creative expression, on what evidence are you basing your self-assessment?”

Sure, some people may be born with creative ability, just as others are born with athletic ability. For whatever reason, we intuitively understand that athletic ability must be paired with hard work for great athletic performance to manifest. However, when it comes to creativity, we often assume that there is a magical muse, which only visits certain people like the tooth fairy, that is responsible for their creative expression.

We all know people like this: When something bad happens, the first thing they do is blame someone or something else. It gets old, right?

But let’s be honest: We are all that person, at least some of the time— and probably more often than we’d like to admit. I certainly count myself among those who, despite knowing better, catch myself taking credit when things go well and looking for a scapegoat when they don’t.