Strive

Chapter 1Could everyone please shut up about happiness?

My aim is to help people become more fulfilled and evolved versions of themselves. While this might sound counterintuitive, one of the biggest blocks to people achieving this is their overwhelming and all-consuming desire to be happy. And I don’t mean just experiencing the emotion of happiness. In society today we interpret happiness as no longer being an emotion but rather a perpetual state of comfort that avoids negative emotion. We want to evolve and grow and innovate — as long as it can be a comfortable process. I see this in organisations all the time. They want to take risks, just as long as they can control everything and ensure it will feel comfortable and avoid any chance of failure. I use the terms ‘happiness’, ‘comfort’ and ‘feeling good’ interchangeably in this book. When I do that, what I’m referring to is our desire to avoid struggle.

An important point to make is that I am not anti-joy or happiness. I think they’re great. I am not the happiness Grinch. (I haven’t even seen either of the movies.) Joy is one of my most favourite emotions and I believe cultivating positive emotion in our lives is important. By all means, seek out happiness and joy. Do things and surround yourself with people who bring you both. However, be mindful of when happiness is not serving you. In some contexts, we have gone too far with the desire to be happy all the time — and it’s come back to bite us on the arse.

The happiness ...