If You Got Everything You Wanted Tomorrow, Would You Actually Be Happy?

The Question That Stopped Me Cold in a Coffee Shop

How certain are you—really certain—that you’d feel happy if you got everything on your wish list today?Not the temporary high. Not the Instagram celebration. But deep, lasting, this-is-enough happiness?I’m asking because last Wednesday, sitting in a coffee shop with perfect parking and the only table by the power outlet, I realized something that shook me:

I had gotten everything I wanted. And I was still searching.

Your Life Is a Hologram Created by Your Emotions

Let me share something that might change how you see everything:

Your life—what you perceive as your reality—is a hologram. Not a fixed truth, but a projection created by your emotional state.

When you’re operating from lack, your hologram shows you a world of scarcity. When you’re operating from fear, your hologram shows you a world of threats. When you’re operating from unworthiness, your hologram shows you a world where nothing is ever enough.

That morning in the coffee shop, my hologram was showing me something disturbing.

The Achievement Trap I’ve Seen Come Up, Again

Here’s my confession:

I’ve been featured in Forbes. I gave a TEDx talk. I speak at conferences. I built the successful practice.

These weren’t just goals—they were supposed to be proof. Proof that I mattered. Proof that I was enough. Proof that I could finally, finally stop running.

And here’s the thing: I know this pattern. I’ve caught it before. I’ve written about it. I teach about it. Yet there I was in that coffee shop, watching it surface again.

Because here’s what nobody tells you about achieving your dreams: Each achievement can become ego fuel that creates more lack.

Forbes feature? Ego whispers: “But what about TIME magazine?” TEDx talk? Ego whispers: “But what about a bigger stage?” Successful practice? Ego whispers: “But what about seven figures?”

The achievements themselves aren’t negative. They’re beautiful experiences. But I had to face an uncomfortable truth—one I’d faced before but apparently needed to revisit:

My source had gotten contaminated again.

It’s humbling, really. To realize that even when you know better, even when you teach this work, the old pattern can sneak back in. Like a default setting your nervous system returns to when you’re not paying attention.

The Coffee Shop Moment That Changed Everything

There I was, laptop open, trying to strategize my next move. My body was in full resistance—shoulders tight, breath shallow, that familiar anxious energy coursing through me.

My hologram in that moment was showing me a world where:

• I wasn’t doing enough
• I was falling behind
• I needed another achievement to matter
• Success meant constant performance

That’s when I noticed it: This wasn’t reality. This was my inner sense of lack projecting itself onto my life, creating a hologram of “never enough.”

The achievements I’d been collecting? They were attempts to fill a void that achievements could never fill.

The Source of Energy Makes All the Difference

Thankfully, years of increasing my self-awareness meant I could catch this pattern in real-time.

I realized I had two choices:

Option 1: Keep Running on Lack

• Chase the next achievement
• Optimize harder
• Strategize more
• Perform success

Option 2: Switch My Source

• Operate from wholeness
• Create from joy
• Achieve from overflow
• Live from truth

The actions might look the same from the outside. I might still write for Forbes. Still speak on stages. Still grow my business.

But when the source changes, everything changes.

How to Know If You’re Creating from Lack or Love

Ask yourself these questions:

When you achieve something, do you:

• Feel satisfied for more than 48 hours?
• Or immediately start planning the next thing?

When you create content, do you:

• Share from overflow and excitement?
• Or calculate what will get the most validation?

When you set goals, do you:

• Choose what genuinely lights you up?
• Or what will finally make you “enough”?

When you rest, do you:

• Feel peaceful and complete?
• Or guilty and behind?

If you answered the second option more often, you’re living in a hologram created by lack.

The Physics of Emotional Holograms

Here’s what I’ve learned: Our emotional state doesn’t just influence our reality—it literally creates what we perceive as possible.

When I operated from lack:

• Every opportunity felt urgent
• Every success felt temporary
• Every rest felt dangerous
• Every “no” felt like failure

When I switched my source to wholeness:

• Opportunities felt abundant
• Success felt sustainable
• Rest felt necessary
• “No” felt like self-respect

Same coffee shop. Same laptop. Same me. Completely different hologram.

The Three-Step Process to Shift Your Hologram

1. Recognize the Projection

When you feel urgent, desperate, or “behind,” pause. Ask: “What emotion is creating this hologram?” Usually, it’s fear, lack, or unworthiness.

2. Name the Source

Be honest: “I’m creating from lack right now.” or “This goal is ego-fuel, not soul-fuel.” No judgment. Just awareness.

3. Consciously Switch Sources

Before taking action, ask: “How would I approach this if I already knew I was enough?”

Then do that. Even if it feels weird. Even if your ego screams. Even if it seems “less strategic.”

What I Discovered When I Switched Sources

That morning in the coffee shop, I closed my laptop. Put my hand on my heart. And asked myself:

“What would I create if I knew I was already enough?”

The answer surprised me: I would create the same things—blogs, programs, talks—but from a completely different energy.

Not to prove worth, but to share joy. Not to fill lack, but to overflow love. Not to perform success, but to embody it.

The Surrender That Changes Everything

I held money in my hands that morning and felt something shift. Not because of the amount, but because I finally understood:

The hologram of lack will never show you abundance, no matter how much you achieve.

But when you shift your emotional source—when you operate from wholeness instead of holes—your entire reality restructures itself.

The Forbes features still come. But now they’re celebrations, not validations. The stages still call. But now they’re service, not performance. The success still flows. But now it’s sustainable, not exhausting.

The Question I’m Really Asking You

So I’ll ask again: If you got everything you wanted tomorrow, would you be happy?

Or would your lack-based hologram just project new things to chase?

Because here’s the truth that took me years to learn:

Happiness doesn’t come from achieving everything you want. It comes from wanting everything you already have.

And that includes the most important thing of all: yourself, exactly as you are, before you achieve another thing.

Your Hologram Is Waiting to Shift

Right now, in this moment, you have the power to change your entire reality—not by doing more, but by shifting your source.

What would you create if you knew you were already enough? How would you work if success was already guaranteed? What would you release if you trusted you were whole?

The achievement game never ends if you’re playing from lack. There’s always another level, another goal, another thing that will finally make you enough.

But when you switch sources—when you create from wholeness—you realize the game was rigged from the start.

You were never meant to prove your worth through achievements. You were meant to remember it was never in question.

Today, I Choose a Different Hologram

The coffee shop is still there. The perfect parking spots still appear. But my hologram has shifted.

Now I see abundance where I used to see scarcity. Now I feel whole where I used to feel hollow. Now I create from love where I used to perform from lack.

The achievements? They still come. But they’re not medicine for unworthiness anymore.

They’re just experiences. Beautiful, temporary, ultimately meaningless experiences that can’t add or subtract from what I already am.

And what I am—what you are—is already enough.

Even if Forbes never calls. Even if the TEDx stage stays dark. Even if the only person who ever sees your worth is you.

That’s enough. You’re enough. We’ve always been enough.

We just needed to shift our source to see it.

What hologram are you ready to shift? Join us in the Insightful Essence Community where we’re exploring what happens when you create from wholeness instead of holes.

Roselyn Perez is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who spent years achieving from lack before discovering the power of shifting sources. She now helps high-achieving women restructure their emotional holograms to create success from wholeness rather than wounds. Because the source of your energy determines the shape of your reality.