At the moment I’m sitting in a beautiful room of a beautiful hostel with my buddy Carlos, getting ready to walk down to the beach for a massage and a casual lunch with two other friends, Cody and Ross.

Breakfast was pseudo-Western fare: eggs, bacon, baked beans, toast, melon. And the owner brought us some fresh dragon fruit as a dessert, explaining that the Chinese believed eating it would give you the strength and magical powers of a dragon.

I don’t have powers, but since I started traveling, I’ve felt like it.

Even when I’m not in a true, palm-tree-laden, beach-covered, cheap-massage-providing paradise, I’m still enjoying life, experiencing things that provide a constant stream of inspiration, excitement, education, and happiness.

I bring this up because in the rush to improve ourselves and get to the next level and achieve the myriad goals we hope to accomplish, it’s important to remember why we do it, and to appreciate our success when we have it.

I’m the kind of person who will never be content with what I have, but I’ve learned (and am still learning) to be happy. And I know when that feeling goes away, it’s time to move on, to change the way I’m doing things.

It takes a lot of work to get to where you want to be, and there will be times where you just have to cope with what’s going on and suffer a little. But even during those periods where everything is going wrong, there should be something in the back of your mind saying ‘yeah, but this is the good stuff’ or ‘man, this is going to make a good story later.’

Happiness is great for your health, mental and physical, and if you aren’t investing in being happy most of the time, there’s probably a better way to do what you’re doing.

Stop everything you’re doing right now and take a moment to think of where you’re at and all the good things you’ve got going for you. Just breath and think and reminisce and smile.

Taking the time to reflect on the good and be happy is one of the best investments you can make.

Update: January 26, 2017

Interesting that at this point I still assumed that I could never be happy with what I had. I suppose this was only a little over a year into my travels, and that means still a relatively short time from my lifestyle in Los Angeles, and everything that came with that lifestyle. So it makes sense, in a way.

For a long while I absolutely felt that burning drive to accomplish more, always. Today, I still feel driven, but not for accomplishment for the sake of accomplishment. It’s more about gleefully pursuing interesting things and feeling the liberty to chase my curiosity. That means I’m always moving toward something, but it also means I’m able to spend more of my time and attention appreciating what I’ve already got. Which has been wonderful.