A year of failure
Over the course of this year, my long term relationship ended and I was terminated from my job. The silver lining of the failure and pain I’ve endured is that I’ve had some hands-on experience delving into the concepts of success and happiness.
I’m happy to report that contrary to popular belief, they are two different things that are created in two different ways.
Defining success
If you ask most people what it means to be successful, they’d probably say it is attaining a certain degree of prosperity or popularity or both. The truth is success is simply the accomplishment of an aim. That aim can be anything you want it to be and doesn’t have to be limited to wealth or fame.
You get to define success on your own terms. You also get to define failure on your own terms, but I’ll save that for a future post.
Success tangled in happiness
Our modern culture has a tendency to strive for success because we think it will make us happy. While it’s true that achieving a goal will give us a temporary boost of happiness, studies have proven that success does not lead to a lasting state of happiness.
Many of us are postponing our happiness until we achieve some vague concept of success that is defined by someone else.
I’m sure we all know of people who have the talent, fame, and fortune and yet are miserable. They try to fill the happiness void with any combination of substances or compulsive behaviour patterns. Some of the most successful musicians, actors, athletes, politicians, and industrialists have suffered this fate.
Yet we continue to tangle these two concepts by believing that achieving success will bring us happiness.
Defining happiness
Happiness is a feeling that we can create with our minds and is always available to us regardless of external factors. We can do this by doing the mindset work that is my life’s passion: managing our thought patterns, attitudes, and beliefs to develop mental habits that cultivate an environment where it gets easier to tap into happiness. Habits such as practicing gratitude, kindness, and connection consistently over time will get you there. I have spent years practicing this in my own life- and it is backed by science.
It is our nature as human beings to evolve and we can either evolve through pain and discomfort or through happiness.
Happiness is not hiding on the other side of success; it can and should be part of the journey towards it. But if we’re running on our default settings, we may have subconsciously combined these two concepts. And if that’s the case, who is defining your success? Many of us are postponing our happiness until we achieve some vague concept of success that is defined by someone else.
Reframe
To get untangled, we need to reframe these terms for ourselves, not society or our parents or our peers. And we need to reframe them with the understanding that one is not dependent on the other. So get clear about defining your aim and determining your measures of success. Remember that happiness is something we can create regardless of achieving any particular goal. Of course we should acknowledge our successes and allow the happiness that comes with achievement, but note that it is always an option along the way.
Why bother striving for success?
You may be wondering, “if I can just be happy without being successful, then why bother setting goals?” The answer is that it is our nature as human beings to evolve and we can either evolve through pain and discomfort or through happiness.
Happiness is a state of mind and making peace with where you are is the first step.
Anyone who has been successful can tell you that once they’ve attained their goal, whether they found happiness or not, they continued to set goals and further evolve. This isn’t a bad thing. It merely underlines that our motivation for success should not be happiness; it should be to challenge ourselves to grow and evolve.
How do we create happiness?
First of all, ask yourself why you want to be happy. I know it may seem like a no-brainer, but as we learned in the move Inside Out, all emotions serve a valuable purpose in our lives. My experience is that chasing happiness actually has the opposite effect- it causes stress.
Happiness is a state of mind and making peace with where you are is the first step. I have learned that it takes time and mental discipline to cultivate that state of mind. But I have seen the positive impact of this mindset during the hardships I faced this year. It is the reason I am so passionate about coaching and wellness and one of the reasons I started this blog.
Summed up
If you are chasing success because you think it will make you happy, you will be disappointed. Pursue your goals because of the growth opportunity it provides, whether you’re successful or not. Happiness is something you can create along that journey. And if you get stuck or lost, I can show you the way.
Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash
