At 45 years old, I knew that I had lived an incredible life. At the same time, to borrow a line from Bono, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. For whatever reason, that year, I hit a point in my life where what had worked fine for me in the past, was no longer working. My mind turned on me and rather abruptly went to a dark place. It didn’t make sense, there was nothing specifically wrong (at least not deserving of this level of despair). My anxiety built; my sleep suffered–my anxiety built some more. I became more frustrated with myself. My mind became my enemy–I was my problem. This deep, dark despair sparked a long, arduous pursuit of happiness (at least that’s what I was calling it). Eight years later, I find myself reflecting on this journey and ready to document some of my personal discoveries and lessons learned as my pursuit continues today.
My pursuit of what? That’s the question. Happiness, love, success, peace of mind…to name a few things that I’ve really desired and felt were important in life. These are basics wants (good wants, I believe) not just a lust for material things or immediate pleasures, but deeper needs that are allusive and tricky to hold onto. When you pursue these types of needs, people call you a seeker, but seeking isn’t the goal, the goal is finding, isn’t it? We really want to be finders and that’s the conundrum and what needs to be addressed.
Happiness is a catch-all emotion. If we’re happy, everything else must be fine, right? And if we’re not…? Happiness is not only an inalienable right but a multi-trillion dollar industry. EVERYONE wants happiness, but why is it so allusive that we feel the need to spend much of our time and money pursuing it? Is that how it’s supposed to work? For the past eight years, I’ve been reading/studying everything that I can get my hands on about happiness—really, I could easily have a doctorate in the field. What makes happiness so complicated? Why isn’t it simple? Is it simple and it’s just me that’s complicating things?
I had spent my life on a path towards accomplishing everything that I set my mind to (and most often succeeding) yet I eventually realized that all of the accomplishments weren’t satisfying my desires and, in fact, they just kept feeding the fire of wanting more. Playing the part of my own shrink, why didn’t I feel happy and more critically, why was I feeling so much anxiety? In a word, EXPECTATIONS. I expected that I should be feeling happier than I was, therefore I felt disappointed and anxious. These feelings fed on themselves and I blamed some fault in myself for them.
I had everything that “I needed” in life: a great family, good health, a prosperous business…so why did I still feel a void? That’s the billion-dollar question that so many authors are getting rich off of. But, if books have the answers, then why did I need to read so many, and why, did I have to spend so many years in pursuit?
I believe that I now have discovered and understand many answers to these questions (not all, but definitely some) and I look forward to sharing what I’ve learned as well as learning more from others. Have I successfully ‘hacked’ the path to happiness? Yes, in some ways I have. Can this hack save time and effort in the pursuit? Yes, absolutely. However, and it’s a big, however, knowing the answer and living it are two different things. You have to have one to get to the other but that doesn’t mean the journey ends, it really just begins. I believe in the saying when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
