Who said anything about happiness?

What do happiness and love have in common? They’re both by-products. Yup, cold and harsh, but in business – if these could be truly measured in the first place – they’d call them lagging indicators at best. Working on our life purpose, on our meaningful way forward, on living fully…all of these may well bring happiness. But as a pursuit in itself? We’re kidding ourselves if happiness is the explicit goal. Especially as, spoiler alert, any attained happiness tends to be temporary.

Don’t get me wrong – happiness is brilliant. Happiness is warm croissants, black coffee, open roads, the smell of our firstborn, that look in our loved one’s eyes, a second off our PB, a mortgage paid, a meal on the table, a target reached…

Here’s a thought. Rather than lasting happiness, maybe those examples are really pleasure, gleeful and celebratory, but passing and transient…

Let’s do some pos psych for a moment. In Tal Ben-Shahar’s hamburger model, the happiness archetype is all about combining present and future benefit. I’ll come back to this. In contrast, postponing present pleasure for future benefit is the no pain no gain archetype, or the rat race as Ben-Shahar terms it. Conversely, focusing on present pleasure without a care for our possible future detriment is hedonism.

How many of us are in the rat race? Constantly working all hours of the day, neglecting our loved ones and our enjoyment in the world around us so as to deliver some envisaged future benefit? And somehow we believe that through attaining this goal the clouds will part and sustained happiness will be miraculously ours?

This belief, false unfortunately, is called the arrival fallacy. For yes, achieving goals and all our wonderful targets can indeed bring about joy, but this is but a spike on the happy-o-meter. Research shows that lottery winners, for example, tend to soon revert to whatever level of happiness they had before their numbers came up. Same with sports champions, the wealthy, and all the rest of us if we hit our goals somehow.

In short, the joy, the pleasure, the happiness wears off. At orangecairns, we love a climbing allusion, so here’s a couple to make me even happier (if only for a short period of time, of course). First up,

“We are designed for the climb, not for taking our ease, either in the valley or at the summit.”

Josh Gardner

Secondly, a story recounted in Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The author, Robert Pirsig, went to climb a mountain with some much older monks. Focussed only on the peak, Pirsig gave up when the going got tough and he saw what still lay ahead. In contrast, the monks, enjoying the here and now of the climb, all summited.

What do these two references tell us? In short, that sustained happiness comes in the path, not in the destination. To return to the hamburger model, the happiness archetype of present and future benefit is through combining pleasure with meaning. In this way, the pos psych MPS version of the ikigai map is to determine that sweet spot on the Venn diagram where what gives us Meaning, what we find Pleasurable, and what we’re Strong at all intersect. For, as George Bernard Shaw once said,

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognised by yourself as a mighty one.”

It is through working on our worthy goals, our meaningful way forward, and living fully that we can potentially attain sustained happiness. This is not passive enjoyment but the active exercise of our fullest faculties and involvement in the world in which we live.

As a goal in itself though, happiness is a non-starter. And seriously, why would we put such pressure on ourselves? Such a pursuit is all too often the Ought Self talking – the person the voices in our head are telling us to be. Perhaps the driving question is non-binary. Not how can I be happy?, but how can I be happier?

Let’s not set ourselves up for disappointment, but live well in the here and now towards some meaningful purpose. Happiness could well be ours along such a path.

Now, as for love….

orangecairns update

I’m blessed by some lovely pre-release reviews for The Tribe of the Cowbells – Mapping Our Purpose REALM. More on this to come soon….

Julian

I help people lead their own way forward