International Happiness Day occurred this week. While I’m normally a fairly happy person, I cannot express how much I hate this holiday. I hate, hate, hate this holiday.
Happiness puts too much pressure on people to be happy. When we’re happy, supposedly, we smile until our faces hurt. Or we’re jubilant and joyous all the time.
That kind of happiness is performative. We’re not supposed to ask for support if we need it. Instead, we’re supposed to put on a smile and carry on.
That kind of happiness is totally overrated.
The Goal of Happiness is Overrated
As I said, I default to being relatively happy all the time. But that’s because I don’t focus on happiness as a goal. Instead, I use other interim, and achievable goals to make happiness possible. (Not guaranteed, but possible.)
Several years ago, I read John Kay’s Obliquity: Why Our Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly. (That’s my affiliate link.) That book totally changed my approach to goal setting. That’s because very few goals take the world’s complexity into account.
That complexity helped me change this kinds of a goal: “Publish Book A by Date Z” into this question: “What’s the first thing I need to do to make publishing Book A by Date Z possible?”
I can answer that question with daily or weekly word counts, research, and my writing tools.
Even better, since I don’t overcommit myself to Book A by Date Z, I can change my goal when Life or the World intervenes. Normal goals don’t allow for zigs and zags, but my life sure zigs and zags. I suspect yours does, too.
Adapt to Zigs and Zags
I meet many people who continue to talk about returning “back” to their original goals. Even when they realize they cannot “make up” the time or their expected progress. Instead, I’ve decided to absorb the learning from each of my zigs and zags.
Here’s an obvious example: Once I realized my vertigo was permanent, I realized I had to adjust to it. My vertigo was not going to adjust to me. So I doubled-down on writing instead of traveling. And not to a specific goal, but to a nonfiction book a year. (I have word counts for my fiction.) Notice I didn’t say which nonfiction book. Just a nonfiction book.
I use serendipity to choose which book to write and when. Sure, I have an idea bank, but I have more ideas than years remaining to write. (Maybe I better pick up speed!) As long as I write a book, I’ll be happy.
I choose to reassess as I proceed. That’s why I choose to consider various challenges, learning, and satisfaction as goals. Not happiness.
Consider Challenges, Learning, Satisfaction as Goals
I use challenges for my workouts: how many steps can I do each day? How many sit-to-stands in a minute? Those kinds of challenges.
Learning is its own kind of challenge, where I appreciate the journey. I happen to learn from teaching and speaking, as much as I learn from the workshops I take.
Both challenges and learning lead to my satisfaction. Especially when I can see my progress.
That’s when I can see how I worked through my challenges, learned, and grew my satisfaction with my performance.
I can be happy then. But not performative happy or jubilant. Satisfied with my work and my life.
Those alternatives offer me the kind of happiness I appreciate.
The question this week is: How can we create alternatives to happiness as our “best” goal?