Happiness Revisited

In an article entitled “How I Stopped Chasing Happiness and Started Enjoying My Imperfect Life” by Mai Pham, featured on tinybuddha, Mai explores the assumption that achievement equals happiness. She talks about her own experience of having set goals, often driven to perfection, and upon achieving those goals felt ordinary when she expected to feel extraordinary. She noted “I blamed my achievements for my dissatisfaction—that they were not tremendous enough for me to feel happy. So I thought I had to do more. I found a new goal, and I fell into the trap again.”

She makes an interesting observation that in the process of trying to achieve success in order to find happiness, she lost sight of the most important goal of all which was to enjoy her life.

Very often, we are pulled into a frenetic pace, lulled into the dull belief that the more we have the happier we will be. If this becomes the driving force to our goals, we unfortunately miss out on the richer experiences and connections our life has to offer. I especially resonate with her statement that “Happiness is the direction we choose and the way we live our lives,” for it implies a slowing down of sorts; a choice to create goals that are less achievement oriented and more experience oriented; a balance between work and play, a shifted focus on self-care and the quality time we spend with the people we love. Happiness then, becomes less about achievement and more about contentment, enjoyment, peace.

To read the full article: https://tinybuddha.com/blog/stopped-chasing-happiness-started-enjoying-imperfect-life/

Photo credit: http://Photo by MI PHAM on Unsplash