The Pursuit of Happiness

When I turned 50, looking out of my corner office window, I asked myself … why did I feel so miserable?

I thought making it as the CEO of a corporate organisation was the ultimate dream in life and would provide all the happiness I sought. I used to think the whole purpose of life was pursuing happiness. Everyone said success was the path to happiness.

But instead of ever feeling fulfilled, I felt only anxious and adrift. And I wasn't alone; my friends in corporate were also struggling with this.

Eventually, after leaving the corporate life behind, I set out on a quest to further understand what truly makes people happy. This led to me completing a course in positive psychology. While pursuing it, I was exposed to data that strongly suggested the very act of chasing happiness can make people unhappy.

What really surprised me was that suicide rates have been rising all over the world. Even though life is getting objectively better by nearly every conceivable standard, be it healthcare, leisure, or general standard of living, more than ever, people feel hopeless, depressed, and alone.

I felt all that and more during my corporate years. What I realised is that there is an emptiness eating away at people, and you don't have to be clinically depressed to feel it.
Eventually, despite being at the penultimate point in my career, I wondered if this was all there was to life.

According to the research, what causes this despair is not a lack of happiness. It's a lack of having meaning in life. During my time at business school in Boston, I was challenged by my coach to reflect and discover a higher purpose or meaning. She was very specific when I came back with a vague statement.

I simply wrote of being successful, happy, and hopefully leading an organisation. Little did I know that there was a difference between being happy and having a meaningful life.

Many psychologists define happiness as a state of comfort and ease and feeling good in the moment. Meaning, though, goes deeper. The renowned psychologist Martin Seligman says meaning comes from belonging to and serving something beyond yourself and from developing the best within you.

“Happiness without meaning,” the researchers wrote, “characterises a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desires are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided.”

Often people worry about having meaning in life, and people often search for meaning or wait for it to appear to them. Yet we can create meaning out of anything if we explore it enough. We can find meaning in cooking, washing up, working, and leisure time with friends. Meaning is not necessarily something enormous that will save the world. It is often the little things in everyday life that connect us to ourselves and our past, present, and future.

Studies show that people who have meaning in life tend to be more resilient. For example, they do better in school and at work, are more creative, more caring and altruistic, more successful, more socially engaged and they even live longer.

Based on research, I found out that people living in wealthier countries tend to have the lowest levels of meaning and what’s more alarming is that suicide rates are significantly higher.

For example, the suicide rate of Japan where per-capita GDP was $34,000 was more than twice as high as that of Sierra Leone, where per-capita GDP was $400. This trend, at face value, didn’t seem to make sense. People in wealthier countries tend to be happier, and their living conditions are practically heavenly compared to places like Sierra Leone which are racked by disease, dire poverty, and the legacy of devastating civil wars.
So what reason would they have to take their own lives?

The question which I was perpetually puzzled by and pondering was how could we all live more meaningfully?

Along my years spent trying to solve this puzzle, I spoke to numerous leaders and individuals, and read various studies on psychology, neuroscience, and other fields of science. One of the most relevant and practical pieces I came across were the writings of Emily Esfahani Smith on The Power of Meaning.

Based on her research and others I was able to customise a version pertinent to me and people I have experimented on over the years.

In summary, there are three pillars to living a meaningful and happy life.

1. Belonging

Belonging comes from being in relationships where you're valued for who you are intrinsically and where you value others as well. But some groups and relationships deliver a shallow form of belonging where you're valued for what you believe or for who you hate, not for who you are.

True belonging springs from love. It lives in moments among individuals, and it's a choice you can choose to cultivate belonging with others.

Too often, the pursuit of happiness has this Western bias of ‘individuality’ where each person steers their personal happiness ship to shore. This is not realistic. We are social animals who are hard-wired to bond and depend on other humans. Hence the basic need for healthy relationships. We thrive on connections that promote love, intimacy, and a strong emotional and physical interaction with each other. Positive relationships with one’s parents, siblings, peers, co-workers, and friends is a key ingredient to overall joy. Strong relationships also provide support in difficult times that require resilience.

Here's an example. Each morning, my friend Suresh used to have breakfast at the same neighbourhood coffee shop. He and the shop owner are on a first-name basis. They don't just conduct a transaction. They take a moment to slow down, talk, and treat each other like humans.

One time, Suresh didn't have his wallet with him, and the coffee shop owner said “Don’t worry about it."

Suresh insisted on paying, so he went back home to get his wallet. But when he gave the money to the coffee shop owner, he drew back. He was hurt.

He was trying to do something kind, but Suresh had rejected him. I think we all reject people in small ways like this without realising it.

I do. I will walk by someone I know and barely acknowledge them. I'll check my phone when someone's talking to me. These acts devalue others. They make them feel invisible and unworthy. But when you lead with love, you create a bond that lifts each of you up. For many people, belonging is the most essential source of meaning.

For others, the key to meaning is the second pillar: 2. Purpose

2. Purpose

Now, finding your purpose is not the same thing as finding that job that makes you happy. Purpose is less about what you want than it is about what you give.

A doctor once told me her purpose was healing sick people. Many parents tell me their purpose is raising their children.

The key to purpose is using your strengths to serve others. Of course, for many of us, that happens through work. That's how we contribute and feel needed. But that also means issues like disengagement at work, challenges with colleagues or our managers. Without something worthwhile to do, people struggle.

Of course, you don't have to find purpose at work, but purpose gives you something to live for, some ‘why’ that drives you forward.

Your life purpose consists of the central motivating aims of your life: the reasons you get up in the morning. Purpose can guide life decisions, influence behaviour, shape goals, offer a sense of direction, and create meaning.

The third pillar of meaning is also about stepping beyond yourself, but in a completely different way.

3. Transcendence

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls this concept 'flow'. This state could almost be described as an altered state of consciousness, or perhaps simply an experience of a higher state of being. Transcendent states are those rare moments when you're lifted above the hustle and bustle of daily life, your sense of self fades away, and you feel connected to a higher reality.

For one person I talked to, transcendence came while praying at a religious place. For another person, it was when playing the violin, For me, it happens when I go out for a run. Sometimes I get so in the zone that I lose all sense of time and pace.

These transcendent experiences can progressively change you. One study had students look up at 200-feet-tall eucalyptus trees for one minute. Afterwards they felt less self-centred, and even behaved more generously when given the chance to help someone.

When time really ‘flies’ during an activity, it is likely because the people involved were experiencing this sense of engagement.

We all need something in our lives that absorbs us into the current moment, creating a ‘flow’ of blissful immersion into the task or activity. This type of ‘flow’ of engagement stretches our intelligence, skills, and emotional capabilities.

Belonging, purpose, transcendence or FLOW