We’ve got it all backwards: How happiness creates success, not the other way around

(3-minute read time)

I don’t bake much.  OK, I’ll be honest I don’t bake at all.  But, I understand that for certain recipes it is pretty crucial to add the ingredients in a particular order.  If you do it out of order then the whole thing could go very wrong and you end up with something that barely resembles what you had planned.  

I think this happens in life too.  Specifically with success and happiness.  We get it backward.

We think once we are successful THEN we get to experience happiness.     

But, when we have this kind of mindset what we end up with barely resembles what we had planned.  Here’s why.

When we believe that happiness is only in the future we miss proven scientific advantages happiness provides.  We miss adding happy as a key ingredient to the recipe we are using to create our desired result.

Science has proven that we are far more efficient at creating our desired results when we are intentional about our mindset and purposefully create positive emotion.

When we experience positive emotions such as happiness, dopamine and serotonin are released.  As a result, we can take on tough challenges with a sense of capability and confidence.

“Life inflicts the same setbacks and tragedies on the optimist as on the pessimist, but the optimist weathers them better” – Martin Seligman

So, if happiness is the thing that begets success, the question becomes – how do I create happiness? And, how I am supposed to be happy when things are hard?  

Here are few ideas….

• Pay attention – We have about 70,000 thoughts per day.  Observe some of them. Notice if they are positive, neutral or negative.  Our thoughts generate our emotions. If you are feeling a negative emotion, take a look at what you are thinking, it will become very clear very quickly why you feel the way you do.  You can generate positive emotion by choosing our thoughts on purpose. Best-selling author Rachel Hollis agrees: “You choose your thoughts, and there isn’t one thing running through your mind that you don’t allow to be there”.    

• Believe new things – Our brains love to be efficient.  They are perfectly content keeping our current belief systems intact – even if they are unhelpful.  The good news is these beliefs are learned and they can be unlearned. Revisit this post to uncover the steps to believe in a way that moves you forward.      

• Tell yourself the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth – There are the truthful facts of a situation and then there is the story we tell ourselves about what the facts mean.  Often the story we create is fictional and unhelpful. When we separate out fact from fiction we can are better positioned to choose a more helpful perspective.  

• What’s perfect about this?  Eckhart Tolle suggests approaching our circumstances far differently than most of us do.  “Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.”    Think about that for a moment.  Where is there a tough area that you definitely would not have chosen?  Now think about how you would show up differently if you accepted it as if you had chosen it?

The life you desire, your goals, your dreams are all within reach. I can definitely help, just click here to schedule a free, 30-minute discovery session.