Finding the Path to True Happiness

How many times have you experienced true happiness? I mean the sort of joy you see in movies, where people leap about for the big finale as the credits start to roll? The truth is that you've probably only experienced it a few times on momentous occasions such as your wedding day or the birth of your children, or on graduation day.

As humans we seek to emulate those extreme highs by seeking out things we think will bring us happiness. We become fixated on goals or objects that we think will make us happy. We are in effect postponing our happiness and making it conditional upon the achievement or the acquisition of certain things.

Have you ever thought, "I'll be happy when I get that promotion" or "My life would be complete if I could live in that house"? As humans we are designed to have an inner drive that motivates us to achieve our best. But that drive or ambition to acheieve should not be confused with us not feeling content unless we get those things.

Have you ever seen a baby learning to walk? They fall time and again. But they delight in the learning process. They are amazed by what their body can do. They have seen others walking and now they want to do it themselves. They push themselves to take more and more steps even if they risk falling over again. They spend hours repeating things over and over until eventually they can walk. They are resilient and they persist in achieving their goal.

Adults often only see the goal. They want to reach it as fast as possible. If they could take shortcuts, they would. But what happens is that even though they may reach their goal faster, they are then disappointed when the outcome does not live up to their expectations. How often have you been to see a movie and wondered what all the hype was about? The greater emphasis placed on how wonderful something will be, the more likely it is that it will actually disappoint or the elation will be short-lived.

That's because people often like the chase. The pursuit of something they don't have. But when they get it, they quickly move on to the next thing. This pattern of constantly chasing things leads to a feeling of malaise. An inability to enjoy the present. Constantly channel surfing, never staying long enough to enjoy a whole episode or movie.

Taking time to be truly present and enjoy each step of the journey for its own sake is the path to true happiness. If you can slow down to admire the scenery, you will start to notice the small things. And therein lies the opportunity for appreciation and gratefulness. It's like taking a slow gondola in Venice and admiring the beautiful architecture as you lick a delicious gelato, compared with zooming past it in a speedboat that causes erosion of the foundations and your hair to get messed up.

If you can focus on the journey itself and everything you learn along the way, then that in itself will be enough. You won't be obsessed by the goal, and therefore unaffected if you get there or not. This detachment will free you mentally from disappointment and the rollercoaster of highs and lows. You will be fundamentally content with the progress you made getting from A to B. If you happen to win a big prize at B, that will merely become an added bonus. It's like winning an Oscar for Lord of the Rings but actually never wanting the project to end as you were filming it.

Rather starngely, you will begin to notice that the more you concentrate on enjoying the process, the more likely you are to achieve your goal. It's as if your obsession with something pushes it further out of your reach. The less you care about the outcome, the more likely it is to happen. Rather like when you take an umbrella with you because it looks like it might rain but in the end it doesn't. You know that if you hadn't taken the umbrella, it would have been pretty much guaranteed that it would rain. Always take an umbrella.....