The Pursuit of Happiness

One of the quotes that caught my attention in the recent times is on the cover page of this blog. All of you reading this would have some instantaneous goals in some shape or form at any given point in time. This is very much a human characteristic : be it a 3 year old crying for an ice-cream or a 13 year old trying to crack an exam or a 30 year old looking for a job. Human desires are never ending – that is the way our minds are designed. If we get to the bottom of those desires, eventually it is all about “happiness”. All of us want to be happy. We tie the happiness to a goal and most likely , these goalposts keep moving – but that is a different discussion altogether. In this article, I would like to bring some clarity on the “happiness meter”; how to make this tangible.

While the thought of writing an article on this subject came into my mine, I was looking at examples of some of the happiest people I know (The ones whom I always see pleasant) and few others who appear to be unsatisfied all the time.  I believe that the difference between happy and unhappy people is the gap between expectation and reality.

There could be lots of reasons to be unhappy. Let us analyse one common example.

Married Couple : All of us expect certain behavior from our spouse.  Especially during the initial months of marriage, there is a high likelihood of expectation mismatch. This is very common and largely due to the fact that each individual is brought up in very different surroundings under different set of people who could influence your character big time. You may not behave the way your spouse would expect you to. That’s fine. But if you are keeping your expectations at a high level and when the reality is not able to match that, it obviously creates a gap.  We do have similar expectations about almost every parameter in life.

Some of the areas of expectation are below.

• People : Spouse, colleagues, children, students, teachers, house maids, building security or anyone who you interact with
• Career : How an ideal job should be
• Financials : Bank balance, Savings, Assets
• Materials : a new pair of shoes, laptop, mobile phone, what not
• Situations : traffic, being in queue etc.
• Entertainment : TV shows, Movies, your favorite sports team
• Numerous other items you can think of

If you compare these situations in your life, you will find gaps between expectation and reality. Let us imagine this “gap” as a tangible object. The size of this Gap is inversely proportional to the happiness. More the gap, the less happy you would be. To have greater happiness, the gap should be shortened.  

Since we have identified the problem and made that tangible, let us look at possible solution in pursuit of happiness. There are only 2 possible solutions. (No rocket science here)

• Option A : Lower the “expectation bar”
• Option B : Raise the “reality bar”.

Raising the reality bar could be a bit tricky because there could be number of parameters that we cant control on that bit. So it would be good to bring in one more “condition check” before we decide option A or option B.  It’s a question that we need to ask ourselves on every situation.

Here is the million dollar question : “is there anything we can do about it?”.

• Option A : Yes
• Option B : No
• Option C : Maybe

Please try to avoid the option C : Its always good to be decisive in life than being “not sure”. So even if you are not sure, try to see whether your answer weigh in towards option A or B and zero-in on one of those options.

If the answer is A, just go ahead and do it and raise the “Reality Bar”.  For example, if you are having trouble with your job, make that switch- don’t complain. Same is true for any situation that you can make a difference.

If the answer is B, please lower the “Expectation Bar” as that is the only option. If you are having trouble with your wife and cant do anything about it, just live with it and stop complaining.

You always do have the opportunity to revisit these question after few months.

Please apply this principle in life on every situation regardless of whether it is small or large. Again, its no complex theory here, it is simple common sense.

But many a times, we are unable to arrive at this and I believe one of the main reason for not able to do that is because of the lack of clarity in making that choice whether we can do something about it or not.   So I would suggest you to have one resolution "getting better at decision making by avoiding option C at 99% of the situations in life"

2020 hasn’t been a very “happy” year for the world due to the pandemic. Let us get better at decision making and have a much happier 2021.

Wish you all a very happy and prosperous new year.