Hi! Managers: Happiness, the ultimate currency of life

At the beginning of the year, a lot of us are setting our personal goals. Often, these goals are centred around material wealth – how much money we want to make in the upcoming year, buying a new home or purchasing a more prestigious car, going for that top job etc.
What we often overlook is the danger of getting stuck in that hamster wheel. Not looking left, not looking right, we join the rat race and even when we reach our goals, we typically suffer from arrival fallacy. We falsely believe that reaching a certain goal or destination leads to sustained happiness.
However, what does reality look like? Isn’t it that the moment we bought a new car, let us say a Volkswagen Beetle, we dream already of having a bigger car, like eg a Toyota Camry. And a few years later, the moment we get the Camry, we dream of having an S-Class Mercedes Benz. It’s the same with our career. Suppose we are salesmen, the same day we get a promotion to the position of sales supervisor, we start immediately working towards our next promotion as a sales manager. We hardly ever lean back, reflect and enjoy what we already are or already have.
We are not rewarded by society for enjoying the journey, but for our successful completion. Society rewards results, not processes; arrivals, not journeys. We are living in a rat race culture.
However, as Dr Tal Ben-Shahar – author of one of my all time favourite books “Happier – Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment” – who taught one of the most popular courses at Harvard University, states: “Happiness, not money or prestige should be regarded as the ultimate currency – the currency by which we take measures of our lives.”
Ben-Shahar explains: “Happiness is not about making it to the peak of the mountain, nor is it about climbing aimlessly around the mountain; happiness is the experience of climbing towards the peak.”
Ben-Shahar’s book, grounded in the positive-psychology movement, is a guide to increase happiness no matter how happy you are when you start reading.
He states that happiness is the overall experience of pleasure and meaning over the aggregate of our lifetime’s experiences. Pleasure is a present benefit while meaning is a future benefit.
Finding the right work – work that corresponds to both our passions and our strengths – can be challenging and plays a major role for our state of happiness. Ben-Shahar has developed a Meaning, Pleasure, Strengths process and encourages you to ask yourself these three crucial questions:

--What gives me meaning?
-What gives me pleasure?
-What are my strengths?
Looking at the answers and identifying the areas of overlap can help you determine what kind of work would make you happiest.
The famous American psychologist Abraham Maslow once stated: “The most beautiful fate, the most wonderful good fortune that can happen to any human being, is to be paid for doing that which he passionately loves to do.”
Going back even further, let me share with you this quote of the Chinese philosopher Confucius: “Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, stated: “Happiness depends upon ourselves.”
It all depends on how we look at things. A few years ago, when I attended an executive education programme at the University of Michigan on positive leadership, Dr Jane Dutton shared with us some of her research findings on hospital cleaners. One group of employees thought their work was boring and meaningless while the other group perceived the same work as engaging and meaningful. Generally, they saw their work in its broader context and actively imbued it with meaning: they were not merely removing the garbage and washing dirty linen but were contributing to patients’ well-being and the smooth functioning of the hospital.
When it comes to generating the ultimate currency, how we perceive the work can matter more than the work itself. Hospital cleaners who recognise a simple truth, which is that their work makes a difference, are happier than doctors who don’t experience their work as meaningful.
Keep in mind that happiness is mostly dependent on our state of mind, not on our status or the state of our bank account, the car we are driving, that top job we are having or the latest technology gadgets that we are using. Our level of well-being is determined by what we choose to focus on (Is the glass half full or half empty?) and by our interpretation of external events (considering failure as a negative thing vs seeing it as a learning opportunity).
Finally, let me share with you one lesson I learned from attending an Anthony Robbins seminar: He says: “What is it that makes people happy? The answer is progress. It doesn’t matter how great your life is, if you are not growing, expanding, you are not gonna feel fulfilled. It doesn’t matter at which stage in your life you are right now. Progress is happiness."
In this spirit, I wish you in 2012 lots of progress in achieving happiness, the ultimate currency in your life.

Heinz Landau is former chairman and managing director of Merck Thailand. Follow his articles in Hi! Managers every second Wednesday of the month. He also writes a blog on caring leadership at www.thecareguys.com.