Pursuit of Happiness
Feature:The Ideology of Happiness
Title:Pursuit of Happiness – Really?
(The Misconception Between Success and Happiness: UNCOVERED!)
From a very young age, we are taught that achieving specific milestones of success – getting good grades or even best if we can, getting into a famous university, having a prestigious career or title, having a certain amount of money saved in the bank, living in the perfect dream house, marrying the right person according to our personal perspective, and having talented or well-behaved kids later on will make us happy. The frustrating truth is that none of these things have anything to do with happiness, not even one. Right from the beginning, we have been confused that achieving these goals will bring us forth to the doorway of happiness. It has been inducted into our minds that the attainment of these milestones is the pursuit of happiness, but at the end of the line, we only got success – not happiness.
For those who are contented to being just successful, let me ask you, “What happens when you reach the goal that you have been setting for?” “Do you feel really happy, elated, and ecstatic?”. . . “If yes, then for how long?” “How long do or could you maintain that heightened and elevated feeling of euphoria after you reach your goal?”. . . For most of us, the answer would probably be “very long,” but without the biases and cover-ups, the answer is really “not that much long.” Let us just say – a day, a week, or even a month or more. Then, “What happens when those feelings fade?” It would just appear that you are not that much pleased to have reached your goal, but not because the goal loses some of its meaning. It is just that we consider the part of achieving to being our happiness. And once the moment of achievement passes, we would be looking for the next goal, the next achievement, and the next pursuit of success – not happiness.
In other words, we seldom spend time basking in the satisfaction of what we have achieved or
Title:Pursuit of Happiness – Really?
(The Misconception Between Success and Happiness: UNCOVERED!)
From a very young age, we are taught that achieving specific milestones of success – getting good grades or even best if we can, getting into a famous university, having a prestigious career or title, having a certain amount of money saved in the bank, living in the perfect dream house, marrying the right person according to our personal perspective, and having talented or well-behaved kids later on will make us happy. The frustrating truth is that none of these things have anything to do with happiness, not even one. Right from the beginning, we have been confused that achieving these goals will bring us forth to the doorway of happiness. It has been inducted into our minds that the attainment of these milestones is the pursuit of happiness, but at the end of the line, we only got success – not happiness.
For those who are contented to being just successful, let me ask you, “What happens when you reach the goal that you have been setting for?” “Do you feel really happy, elated, and ecstatic?”. . . “If yes, then for how long?” “How long do or could you maintain that heightened and elevated feeling of euphoria after you reach your goal?”. . . For most of us, the answer would probably be “very long,” but without the biases and cover-ups, the answer is really “not that much long.” Let us just say – a day, a week, or even a month or more. Then, “What happens when those feelings fade?” It would just appear that you are not that much pleased to have reached your goal, but not because the goal loses some of its meaning. It is just that we consider the part of achieving to being our happiness. And once the moment of achievement passes, we would be looking for the next goal, the next achievement, and the next pursuit of success – not happiness.
In other words, we seldom spend time basking in the satisfaction of what we have achieved or