A TED Talk (Shawn Achor: The Happy Secret to Better Work) that I watched recently gave me a unique realization - that it is not that success causes happiness, as is traditionally believed - rather, it is happiness that causes success.
This makes good sense. The speaker clarified that success for the sake of happiness usually tends to inspire us to only create higher goalposts, which we never eventually reach, and thereby always have reason to be dissatisfied and unhappy.
Happiness inspires us to do good things for the world around us, and that in turn creates well-wishers for our success. Happiness helps us identify our passion, what we will naturally want to work hard for and excel at. Happiness will make our efforts and life in general more enjoyable and livable.
But how do we start? How do we attain this happiness without success?
Happiness (or lack of it) is, to the most degree, a state of mind. Only a small part of it is determined by reality; most of it is a result of our perceptions about the reality - our worries, our excitement, our anticipation, our guilt, our pride. We can choose which feelings to experience, and which bad memories or unpleasant information to weed out, especially if they do not affect our next actions. Should we choose to focus on the good, and be happy and optimistic, we will be inspired for action and success.
Link to the TED Talk:
https://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work
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