I came across an idea yesterday that really stuck with me, and I want to share it with you. It’s a principle that flipped my understanding of what #happiness is.
The Centre of the Universe
In the 1500’s, when Copernicus told the world that the Earth rotated around the sun, it created a major shift in what had for centuries been believed: that the Earth was the centre of the universe and everything revolved around it.
From that moment on, everything — our very understanding of the #universe — changed forever.
Happiness is not a result of what we’ve long believed…
Similarly, in the world of psychology today, a huge paradigm shift is taking place. It’s called
#PositivePsychology, or the Happiness Advantage.
For untold generations, we’ve believed that happiness is a by-product of #success.
But in fact, the opposite is true.
Much like when Copernicus finally understood the startling discovery of his day, ours is this: success actually orbits around happiness.
This changes everything
Think about it. We’ve always been told to work hard, keep our nose to the grindstone, and toil indefinitely for the promise of happiness in some distant future. Meanwhile, the most successful people, the ones with the competitive edge, do not regard happiness as some distant reward. They do not suffer through their days, or lumber along half-asleep hoping for things to suddenly “get better someday”.
They are the ones who show #gratitude, zero in on the positive and savour the sweet rewards of life at every turn.
Better understanding happiness
How do we define happiness? Obviously, positive emotions — pleasure combined with underlying feelings of meaning and purpose. Happiness implies a positive mood in the present and a positive outlook to the future.
But perhaps a more accurate definition is one that Aristotle used: eudaimonia, which doesn’t directly translate to “happiness” but rather to “human flourishing”. So for Shawn Achor, the author of The Happiness Advantage, happiness is the joy we feel striving after our potential.
I love this.
Finally, some sense
This explanation finally makes sense to me, removing the voodoo-like mystery that happiness has elusively hid behind all these years.
This is why I have a spring in my step now when I get out of bed. This is why I have boundless #energy when it comes to planning and implementing all the exciting things I will do next with my life.
This is why I don’t feel any guilt not being at the office when my little girl is dancing in her high chair in the middle of the day, and I join her. This is why although money is tight, I’m not up at night worrying about it because I’m creating not one but many channels for it to flow through in the very near future.
I left my job, my career, my prestige, my authority (and in a lot of ways I hadn’t anticipated, my identity) for all the right reasons. I am striving after my potential.
Sometimes, we just need a little reminder 🙂
What do you think of this idea?
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