For you, which comes first: happiness or success?
My guess is that you have already answered that question several times today. You answer it every time your brain says, "I'll be happy when I find a job." "I'll be happy when I get a promotion." "I'll be happy when my dissertation is finished."
The formula is clear: Work harder, then you'll be successful, then you'll be happier. When I asked some of my Harvard students, their answer was easy: "I'm working my butt off now so I can be happy when ... [fill in the blank with a six figure banking job, make a scientific breakthrough, get into medical school, etc.]."
But here's what these brilliant students often forget: Getting into Harvard was supposed to make them happy. How many of them in high school thought they'd be happy once they got in? Why didn't the success then happiness formula work?
It's hard to find happiness after success if the goalposts of success keep changing.
Now for the good news. Based on the findings in "The Happiness Advantage," If you reverse the order of the formula, you end up with greater happiness and greater success rates. Happiness and advantage, and the precursor to greater success.
Every single relationship, business and educational outcome improves when the brain is positive first. If you cultivate happiness while in the midst of your struggles, work, at school, while unemployed or single, you increase your chances of attaining all the goals you are pursuing, including happiness.
So how can we pursue happiness right now? When I was counseling overwrought Harvard students, one of the first things I would tell them is to stop equating a future success with happiness. Empirically, we know success does not lead to happiness. Is everyone with a job happy? Is every rich person happy?
Then, step one is to stop thinking that finding a job, getting a promotion, etc. is the only thing that can brings happiness. Success does not mean happiness. Check out any celebrity magazine to look for examples to disabuse you of thinking that being beautiful, successful or rich will make you happy.
Second, realize that happiness is a work ethic. Happiness is not a mystery. You have to train your brain to be positive just like you work out your body. We not only need to work happy, we need to work at being happy. Try an experiment right now, which I call the 21 Day Challenge. Pick one of the five researched habits and try it out for 21 days in a row to create a positive habit, then comment on this blog or Facebook me and tell us your results.
If you are having trouble getting started, at the end of my TED talk I describe how to make those habits even easier to start by managing activation energy.
If you reverse the formula, you can turn happiness into a success advantage, raising every business and educational outcome. Start by doing one of these habits. And once and for all, stop yourself and others from saying, "I'll be happy when ... " That formula is broken. But there is a better one: Happiness leads to greater success.
Watch my TEDx talk on "The Happiness Advantage" at Harvard "Our society's formula for success and happiness is broken."
**I would love some help researching this. How have you seen yourself or others put happiness off until they were successful? How can we help people reverse this trend?
Sophie Chiche: Get Rid of Those Resolutions
1. Don't do anything you know is wrong or injust, for money, even if it means a promotion.
2. Bring in a box of donuts or fat free cake for your co-workers, this will hopefully put on smile on their faces, and high- fives for you.
3. Forget about tv and rent some of your fav DVDs to watch, (movies you enjoyed as a child or just make sure they have good and pleasent endings).
4. Get away from it all, go to the mountains, beach, island hopping, anything that doesn't remind you of the stress of the city life.
5. Plan, a man without a plan will surely fail. Plan to get away from it all, away from the hype of living the hollywood lifestyle, or plan on starting your own small business in the country side, or starting a charity for the less fortunate people of America.
www.elizabethfarrar.com
www.happierthanabillionaire.com
In discerning what success truly means to the individual, then happiness is a natural side effect.
It is that simple.
The problem is we are told success is a large bank account, fancy cars, travel, large homes, celebrity. and we have made that our religion. However, if one takes the time to truly realize what they want out of life, and often times this is what we consider our end goal... we might discover we already have it.
For example, many people that are caught up in the rat race are really seeking freedom...but their rat race is what keeps them imprisoned. If they let go of the need to be busy and keep up with what everyone else defines as achievement, they may discover the freedom they require already exists... if they let go and just live. Hence...happiness.
The issues in the economy may be upsetting to many but what if this is just a way to let people recalibrate to what really matters, to let go of al the material stuff that has been imprisoning and restrictive and get back to what counts such as time, connection and breathing.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/09/02/fauja-singh-reveals-the-k_n_946241.html
"I'll be at peace when ..." (fill in the blank for yourself). That belief pushes away the very peace that is being sought so ardently. All 5 steps help in that situation too.
Adyashanti suggests that at the start of a meditation, we ask ourselves: "Is it true that I don't already have what I am hoping to obtain by meditating (peace, happiness, wisdom, etc.). The ego mind answers straight away "of course not!". Go deeper! I have found that to be an amazing wake-up call - it's all there already!
It's the lens we are looking through that colors everything. Jesus said, "When the eye is healthy, the whole body is full of light" [and the whole world too].
What we seek from our deepest heart is always already there, we find it as soon as we start looking with the right vision, and the exercises suggested in this article will all help to heal our vision.
Therefore the sage concerns himself
with the depths and not the surface,
with the fruit and not the flower.
He has no will of his own.
He dwells in reality,
and lets all illusions go.
Lao Tzu
Certainly it does not make the hardship go away, but there is a big difference between saying "I'm not going to let this bother me, I'm going to focus on what I do have" and sticking your head in the sand and denying the problem.
I could worry about a problem I have no control over until it gives me ulcers, disturbs my sleep, makes my hair fall out, gives me heart problems, makes me gain weight, lowers my immune system, decreases my tolerance to physical pain, etc... or I could choose to take action on what I can, be positive and find those things I enjoy in life, no matter how big or small.
I'm not ignoring the problem, I'm simply choosing how I feel about it.
"...We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes.” - Charles R. Swindol, founder Insight for Living
I was not advocating misery or worry. There is a third action - letting your feelings move you into right action with equanimity. Equanimity or peacefulness are not the same as being "happy", which is generally considered a more superficial emotion (unless you are a Buddhist - but again, different meaning).
We can change our feelings about our past. We can influence how people around us act. And nothing is inevitable.
Also I completely stopped watching 95% of television and took a break from politics.
It may sound like simplistic drivel, but these thing work. ? Unemployment looming? Financial problems? Relationship Issues? Health Problems? You name it. I got it. And I tell you this.
Right now I am happy because I decided to be. You can too.