We live in a complicated world with competing challenges coming from work, family, partners, children, aspirations, illness, and the routine ups and downs of life. How is one able to create and nurture a sustainable state of happiness? There have certainly been times in my life when I thought it was not attainable. The good news is: it is.

 

Not surprisingly, happiness, like any other state, is transient. There is no such thing as permanent happiness, but the gaps in-between can be substantially shortened with the same kind of practices as all of the other leadership skills in our toolkit. One knows happiness once it is experienced, and then develops the desire to cling to it. Sometimes we cling to the wrong things, and then we feel disappointed.

 

I listened to a recent podcast (Tim Ferris Episode #692) with Arthur Brooks, author of Build The Life You Want: The Art & Science of Getting Happier, who brilliantly sums up the biological science, psychology, philosophy, religion, and spirituality of happiness in a way that can be applied for sustained high performance. What I will call the “trifecta of happiness” as Arthur discusses includes: Enjoyment, Satisfaction, and Meaning. The podcast is very much worth the listen to go deep into this subject in a succinct way. I like distilling concepts into a singular understanding, and my take away both personally and from the podcast is that just like there are many intelligences that correlate to what we statistically refer to as ‘g,’ the common variable I think happiness can be distilled into is meaning. Without meaning, there is no enjoyment or satisfaction, however, with satisfaction or enjoyment there may not be meaning. Thus, I would propose meaning is the essence that transcends all three variables, even though I acknowledge that this is an untested theory and probably impossible to prove using the modern scientific method. Nonetheless, it is a useful reference. What I have learned from my coaching clients is that the common variable is always attached at the core to meaning. A loss of meaning with work. A loss of meaning for motivation. A loss of meaning for the status-quo. Meaning gets eroded over time. It’s a natural evolutionary outcome if one is on a path of professional development. What was meaningful in your 20’s is no longer meaningful in your 30’s and so on. Subsequently, staying vigilant about meaning is a very useful practice when you feel stuck, offbalance, or even pinned against a wall. In Arthur’s podcast he points out several useful questions to pose to oneself in this exercise, and I will borrow one of them from him to share.

 

The Exercise:

What is your purpose?

 

To go even deeper on this, I propose you develop an "elevator pitch" response to this question for no other purpose than to refine your response with clarity for yourself. It is like developing your own personal creed that you can keep with you internally. At the end of many coaching sessions with clients, we have collaboratively and quite spontaneously developed this.