The Backward Happiness Hunt

Last week, I wrote a blog post about how we’ve pushed our children to find success so that they can find happiness in life. It made me realize that most of us are on a backward happiness hunt. We’ve tied our happiness to success: financial success, material success, a big career, Instagram worthy trips and friendships, etc. Yet what if we tied our success to happiness? What if we sought joy, contentment, consciousness, and happiness first and that led to our own definition of success?

We are tying our happiness to an outcome. This is ultimately a set up for a big fall. “When I have that promotion, I’ll be happy.” “When we buy that big house, we will be happy.” As most of us can admit, that isn’t always the case. What if we were happy first? What if we were content with ourselves, yet still set goals and intentions and didn’t tie ourselves to the outcomes of those goals? What would be different in our lives if we always chose joy and happiness and the outcome of that is that we are joyful and happy regardless of what happens?

Stop tying your happiness to an outcome and try focusing on the adventure of the experience. #happiness #success #goals Click To Tweet

Think about this…we are trying to get happy from a place of discontent and unhappiness. That doesn’t make much sense. Think about how much easier it is to set goals and pursue them from a place of happiness and joyful consciousness. Things aren’t so difficult from this place, but rather fun and exciting and filled with the adventure of the experience, not the tie to the outcome. 

Choosing Happiness Is a Privilege 

Without question, I am asking these questions from a place of privilege. I am a middle class, gainfully employed, and highly educated white woman who has had lots of doors opened for her just based on who she is. It’s far harder to choose happiness when you are hungry and without many of the basic necessities of life. I’m not trying to convince people in those situations to “just choose happiness” because that’s a bag full of B.S.! Rather, I’m suggesting that I can choose. With that choice, I can advocate for others while also choosing a life of happiness for myself. I don’t think they are mutually exclusive.

I’m really asking these questions in relation to our children and how intensely we are pushing our children to find success and then tying that success to their happiness. When doing so, we are teaching them the backward happiness hunt and setting them up for a lifetime of seeking joy through their external world versus choosing it internally and then applying that to the rest of their lives. 

So how can you choose happiness? That’s unique to each of us, though it is often a combination of positive self talk, physical activities that increase our energy and self-esteem, gratitude, surrounding ourselves with other happy and joyful people, and logical thinking patterns. It is not necessarily a sports car or a high paying job. Let’s choose happiness and then watch success come as a byproduct of it. Life is short, why not be happy now?

Love,

Lisa Kaplin Psy. D. PCC