Change Proof: Leveraging the Power of Uncertainty to Build Long-term Resilience

CHAPTER 19

Happiness Doesn’t Deliver Resilience

Happiness is really just about four things: perceived control, perceived progress, connectedness (number and depth of your relationships), and vision/meaning (being part of something bigger than yourself).

—TONY HSIEH

There’s a poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson about a man named Richard Cory, who is the envy of the entire town in which he lives.

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he sai’,

“Good-morni’g,” and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than ...