How to Recognize What Really Makes You Happy

Part 2 of How Happiness Integrates the Values ​​of Income, Relationships, and Purpose.

You may have focused on achieving financial security before you gave serious thought to personal happiness. Or perhaps you believed that achieving such certainty would “ensure” your happiness.

But what if your financial worries are actually getting in the way of the state of well-being you—and frankly everyone else—aspire to? And what if you’re now financially wealthy, but that hasn’t actually brought you (or bought) a state of well-being?

This post focuses on the various factors that social scientists have linked to this ideal mental and emotional state. And while this seminal topic is hardly without controversy, there is a consensus about what people generally need to feel good and content with their lives.

Preoccupation with your job can interfere with opportunities for happiness

Happy people see life as an adventure. However, if you’ve been single-mindedly focused on improving your finances, it’s possible that you’re also finding life stressful—a source of worry and anxiety rather than wonder and satisfaction.

Once your income reaches a level consistent with your goals and you realize that you’ve finally made it financially, you may also find that your longer-term problems and self-doubt have not been resolved at all. You had also not specifically planned what the free time available to you could best be used for.

Worse, the “grind” that marked your work-related commitments may have become second nature to you (virtually a compulsion), so making a lifestyle change may not even feel profitable.

Ironically, the freedom and autonomy you assumed would come from earning enough money could breed fear all by itself. Instead of creating happiness, it might create an unsettling vacuum.

It’s like a newly retired person who expects their long-awaited retirement day to be—naturally—fulfilling. But after first enjoying this long-awaited freedom, they experience an emptiness akin to lethargy, boredom, or depression.

There are other downsides to financial security that I can’t go into detail here. But I think what I just described should be stimulating.

In short, money can definitely give you more free time, material goods, and beautiful experiences. By itself, however, it can’t do much to address deficiencies in your self-image or to give you meaning (i.e., other than make more Money).

Which fortunately contributes as much or more than one’s own income

Other authors have reported cases of people living in poverty yet content with their lives. And what makes them content is their gratitude for what they have been “gifted”: a caring family and community in which they are both a part and nurtured.

On the contrary, if we feel isolated from those around us, then without such affinity and no matter how much wealth we have amassed, we will experience the unfortunate malaise of alienation.

Plagued by spiritual and moral nausea, emotionally we will continue to crave that contented state that is impossible to attain until we feel we belong, that we have a genuine connection and sense of belonging to what is outside of us. We may feel financially secure, but we don’t relational sure, and that leaves us lacking in what would otherwise contribute to our well-being.

The so-called ‘Golden Triangle of Happiness’, based on a 20-year research study conducted as part of Deakin University’s partnership with Australian Unity Real Wellbeing, states that the three critical aspects of happiness are the standard of living (see. finance); strong, affirming relationships (which are not necessarily romantic); and an abiding sense of purpose, purpose, or accomplishment.

To go into more detail about these three key areas, we might add that once effectively addressed, individuals are no longer held back by primitively conceived survival threats that usually stem from childhood emotional instability.

Freed from outdated fears, then, by facing their potential-limiting fears, they can be “out there,” more open and curious, and willing to take on the added fears and risks that come with trying new things.

Because if life is to be an ongoing, always fascinating adventure, it has to be dynamic. So as long as we are burdened with mental and emotional insecurities, we will not be ready to fully engage in life – be it alone, with others or with our physical environment.

Courage and confidence blossom when we are able to quell past fears that have imprisoned us in various ways in life. And once we can break away from these self-limitations, our much expanded comfort zone will free us to feel Everyone our feelings – not just the safe ones that have sealed us off from so much life that may have to offer us.

And it can hardly be overemphasized that such engagement, when done properly, entails a creative, individualistic balance between (childlike) immediate pleasures and (more adult and pleasure-limiting) longer-term goals and aspirations.

Awakened to possibilities we hadn’t previously opened up to, we can imagine, welcome, and experiment with things that felt too scary when our approach was too often one of defensive avoidance. From this expanded perspective, our lives can take on dimensions that bring us levels of satisfaction previously unavailable to us.

Adam Omary, in his paper The Science of Happiness, downplays the importance of finance and succinctly outlines the components of well-being, stating, “All in all, being happy means living with mindfulness, meaning, and purpose.” And it is for everyone left to decide what purpose to pursue based on their values.

I come to the most specific “how one” level of accuracy in my next post on happiness. Here I will only allude to a few elements that, more specifically, contribute to a state of well-being.

And that includes (but is hardly limited to) promoting nutritional health, fitness and resilience; Cultivate authenticity, gratitude and forgiveness (both for oneself and for others); Boosting your motivation and self-esteem (but without arrogance or selfishness); and spend more time getting back into and communicating with nature.

Part 1 of this three-part post focused on the relationship between financial security and happiness; Part 3 will discuss in detail the many things you can do now to become happier.

© 2022 Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. All rights reserved.