2–Seek Wisdom, Practice Love, Get Results: Happiness & Success Part 2
Written by Pete Bowen on September 2, 2020
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
HAPPINESS COMES FROM GOOD RELATIONSHIPS
Harvard University has been conducting the Study on Adult Development for more than 80 years. It includes Harvard undergrads from the 1930’s and disadvantaged Boston youths from the early 1940’s—and their children. The purpose was to find out what makes happy and health lives.
The ongoing study has tracked the lives of thousands of people in over a hundred dimensions including their lifestyle, health, careers, psychology, relationships, and financial success.
The study confirms something you probably already know.
Dr. George Vaillant, who directed the study for more than 30 years, said that “The warmth of relationships throughout life has the greatest positive impact on ‘life satisfaction.’”
In short, Vaillant said, “Happiness is love. Full stop.”
Happiness doesn’t come from money, your education level or your social status.
Happiness comes from good, high-quality relationships.
The Harvard study shows that good relationships don’t just bring happiness. With good relationships, you’ll be healthier, feel better and live years longer.
It is simple. To achieve happiness in life, develop good, strong relationships.
Everything else is a distraction.
WHAT IS HAPPINESS?
What is happiness?
Happiness is a deep satisfaction with life. It is lasting, deep fulfillment. Happiness is the fulfillment of our human nature.
Back in the late 1980’s, I was a young Marine officer learning how to fly jets in south Texas.
A big part of our training was learning how to land on aircraft carriers. You have to fly a very precise, three-dimensional path at exactly the right angle to a small spot on the carrier deck.
If you do it right, the tailhook on your airplane grabs a cable on the deck and you go from 140mph to a full stop in about 2 seconds.
For a year, we practiced carrier landings on runways as part of every flight. Some flights were nothing but practice carrier landings. Every single landing was graded in detail. It was a grueling and often humbling process.
Finally, the day came to fly out to the aircraft carrier to get our carrier landing qualification.
You are alone in your airplane. From 20,000 feet, the aircraft carrier looks like a grain of rice on your kitchen floor.
The pressure is enormous. Your career depends on making the landings. That’s assuming you don’t make a mistake that gets you killed.
The first landing was a blur. You get through the pressure and land on the carrier deck because you’ve practiced it so many times. When you’re under pressure, you fall back on your training, on your habit patterns—an important lesson to remember.
After that first landing, there was an overwhelming feeling of fulfillment. After six landings, there was another overwhelming sense of fulfillment when they told me, over the radio, that I was carrier qualified.
Fulfilled because I fought through fear, stress and uncertainty to pass the test. All that practice and hard work changed me. It changed my relationship with myself.
Fulfilled because we—the students who qualified and the instructors who taught us—accomplished something difficult together. We bonded through that process.
You’ve probably had these moments in life in which we worked really hard for something, accomplished it, and felt fulfilled. It could be a lot of things like:
- Getting a well-deserved promotion or professional certification
- Climbing a mountain
- Running a long-distance goal race
- Having kids that grow into good people.
- Achieving a goal weight
- Ending substance abuse
- Completing a big hobby or household project
The more difficult the challenge, the more you suffer to achieve it, the more fulfilling it is.
Easy wins aren’t as meaningful or fulfilling. Tough wins are.
Often, fulfillment comes from just spending time with people that you love. Late night college discussions. Walks on the beach. Having a meal together. Hanging out with someone you’re interested in. Watching a movie with your spouse and kids. Telling stories and reminiscing. Laughing together.
Then there’s the fulfillment that comes when we combine the challenges with the relationships and achieve things together. Winning the league championship. Raising great kids with your spouse. Helping a friend build a backyard deck. Getting together to help others in need. Supporting a friend who is going through tough times.
How often do we hear people receiving awards say, “I couldn’t have done this without help from…”?
Sometimes when I tackle a challenge alone, I forget that I’m really doing it in relationship with myself.
While we all seek fulfillment and happiness, we take different paths—according to our talents and interests—to get there. Some will pursue fulfillment using their talents as physicians, businesspeople or public servants. Others will pursue happiness through service as teachers, artists, ministers or parents. Still others will find fulfillment in their interests like gardening, wood-working, sports, food and other activities.
Happiness is the deep, long-lasting fulfillment, satisfaction, and contentment with what you have achieved and who you have become in life. It might be hard to capture with words, but you know it when you feel it.
Finally, some people prefer to use the word joy instead of happiness for the deep fulfillment we’re talking about. That is ok. We’re describing the same deep experience, just using different words. For our purposes, we’ll use happiness to mean long-term fulfillment.
Previous/Go to Part 1 in series.
Thanks!
Comments
Comments are closed.
Pingback:
William Hughes On September 14, 2020 at 12:34 pm
Funny, Pete. I just started reading: “The Happiness Advantage” by Shawn Achor who teaches that course at Harvard.
Pingback:
Pingback: