Once a primary school teacher set an assignment to a group of students. He asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up, and some wrote down astronaut, others wrote down actor, some wrote down singer and others wrote down scientist. And when she was marking through these papers she noticed that one boy wrote down the word, “happy”. She went up to him and she said, “John, I think you misunderstood the assignment.” And he said, “Miss, I think you misunderstood life.”
Somewhere along the line our definition of success blurred, it became about money, and it’s funny how that desire for power and wealth increases the speed at which we believe we need to work so that we can supersede our peers in the rat race. Moving at a face that no fit bit or no wearable can truly monitor or analyze the stress and the intensity.
Since we’ve been young we’ve all been exposed to definitions of happiness. The scientists and the mathematicians have algorithms and formulas that they believe adds up to the equation of happiness. We have the corporate professionals, we have the corporate hierarchy of promotion and career progression to measure their success.
We need to define what success means to us; we need to redefine what success means. Let’s not make happiness and success about the size of our homes but about the size of our heart. Let’s not make it about gratification but gratitude. We speak about being healthy and our well-being but we act more like human doings than like human beings, and therefore instead of to-do lists we need to-be lists. Instead of thinking about what we want to do think, about who you want to be.
Do you want to be more self-aware? Do you want to be more conscious? Do you want to be a better person? Do you want to be a difference in the world? We need to move away from what we want to do in situations. The three most common things that we forget when we are rushing out of our homes is our keys, our wallet, or our mobile phone. And it’s absolutely hilarious how you rush back inside looking in all your drawers and desks and make a mess sometimes, and then how many times have you had it that you realized it was actually in your back pocket? Sometimes even in your hand. And it’s funny how our experience of happiness is so similar to this. We run around trying to find it in absolutely every place. But actually, when we come back home we find that it is within.
When I was in my teens, I heard a fascinating quote from Jim Carrey, and he said, “Everyone should become rich and famous and do everything they’ve dreamed of just to see that it’s not the answer.” And what did he mean by that? He meant that what we are actually searching for is not out there, but it’s inside. And therefore happiness is actually an inside job.