Our Best Bet To Find Happiness Is Not To Specifically Look For It
Great philosophers and pro golfers say the indirect approach is best.
How do you find happiness? That’s a tricky question with no easy answer. In our current age, one might be tempted to do research. Bring in a lab, do some studies, and crunch some numbers; these results will point us in a direction or give us a carefully planned goal to achieve.
I think data-driven goals are a double-edged sword of sorts. They give us a way to gauge performance and improve, but they also keep us concentrated on numbers. Many times we’re overly focused on this data. How can you not be? It follows us every place we go, and everything is so trackable now.
Marketing research firm Kentley Insights indicates $20 billion was spent on marketing research and public opinion polling in 2017. All that money on just getting numbers to track results. Now, this might be fine for a corporation trying to figure out what flavor cream to put on their cookie. But what about you personally?
Data may work for losing weight or running long distances. However, what about less calculable things? What about happiness? Can number-crunching point you in that direction or indicate a way to achieve personal fulfillment?
These vague and less quantitative desires leave us confused, and me as well. This led me to study philosophy as I got older. As I read, a theme kept reoccurring. Philosophers and thinkers around the world and from different times kept repeating a similar answer in different words.
You don’t find happiness or fulfill desires by careful design; they’re often a byproduct of doing what’s right in a long series of actions.
Virtue, Its Byproducts, And The Indirect Path
“One should embrace virtue for its own sake and doing so is necessary to get the good side effects of it.” — “The Practicing Stoic”, Ward Farnsworth
In his book, Ward Farnsworth examines the ideas of the stoics and what goals they seek to achieve. One of their goals is to achieve “eudemonia” or a sense of well-being. According to Farnsworth, they work to experience the “good life” as opposed to having a “good mood”. They never focus on being happy, just virtuous.
A stoic’s prime purpose is to be “helpful to others and serve the greater good”. This is what creates virtue and happiness grows from that. However, they’re not doing good for others and the world around them in an attempt to cultivate personal happiness. They do it because it’s the right thing to do.
The pleasant byproduct just happens to be happiness. In other words, the stoics achieve happiness indirectly by doing the right things over time. Likewise, Confucius used the same indirect method to achieve virtue itself.
Author Edward Slingerland in his book “Effortless Action” mentions Confucius believed the best way to gain virtue was by not consciously trying to achieve it. He believed if you genuinely loved the ideas of virtue, you’ll spontaneously live it.
The Chinese philosophy of “Wu Wei” sounds similar; it encourages its practitioners not to specifically aim or strain to achieve goals. A modern philosopher named Alan Watts describes it as a practice of “not forcing”. He reminds us when you see a brilliant acting performance, it never looks forced — just natural. He says Wu Wei is “the art of sailing instead of rowing”.
The ancient Hindu text the Bhagavad Gita advises us to not even think about the reward or end you have in mind. Just do the work in front of you.
“Work done for a reward is much lower than work done in the yoga of wisdom. Set thy heart upon thy work, but never on its reward. Work not for the reward, but never cease to do thy work.”
They all speak it in different languages and times, but the lesson sounds the same. Strangely enough, it exists in more than philosophy.
Not Aiming At a Target, Just Focusing On the Work
As bizarre as it sounds, you can also hear these ideas in the modern sports world, particularly golf. In an interview on the AOM podcast, author and sports reporter Sam Weinman sounds like he’s channeling the ancient philosophers above.
He says golfers who lose spend lots of time soul searching. The pain of losing often makes them introspective on how they play the game. This is especially true of winners in a rut. Moreover, he says the general problem that turns winners into losers is over-focusing on outcomes. The fix is similar to what the philosophers recommend.
Weinman says, “In order for you to achieve the thing you want the most, you have to almost trick yourself into not caring about it too much.” Instead of thinking about a tournament victory, concentrate on making the best swing, drive, or putt possible. So, the best way to win is not to think about winning.
The same goes for archery. Ryan Holiday describes the training of the famous archer Awa Kenzô in “Stillness Is The Key.” He mentions Kenzô spent little time training his students on techniques of shooting. They often spent days at a time firing arrows into hay bales at point blank range. Only after countless hours did they move onto using a target.
Even when the target was used, Kenzô didn’t praise his students for hitting a bullseye. It was almost as if hitting the target didn’t matter. He’d warn his students against too much “willful will”. In other words, they weren’t to chase an outcome.
Holiday says, “The energy spent aiming the arrow is energy not spent developing your form.” If you’re too focused on the physical technique or outcome, you’re not relaxed enough to be smooth. Sounds like advice the stoics or a student of Wu Wei might give, doesn’t it?
Be Careful With Goals and Numbers
The data-driven analysis and goal setting we do in our current world is an excellent tool. However, it has its place. As you can see, the eclectic selection of philosophers mentioned previously advise a different path. In those unquantifiable characteristics we desire — from happiness to fulfillment — goals and numbers can be misleading or disheartening.
The Greek, Chinese, and Hindu philosophers recommend we achieve these innate desires by not chasing them. Moreover, golfers and a famous archery teacher teach the same lesson. As counterintuitive as it sounds, you don’t find happiness or fulfill desires by careful design; they’re often a byproduct of doing what’s right in a long series of actions.
But it goes further than this. As I’ve taken up writing, I’ve been frequently frustrated. At least a few times a month, ideas of quitting fill my mind; the frustration comes from my focus on outcomes. It’s only natural to be frustrated when you invest time and see no results.
As I’ve researched this article, my inherent flaw is glaring now. I’m only frustrated because I’m focusing on the results. What I should be doing is focusing on the work. Happiness is a byproduct of developing virtue. How can I be relaxed enough to be smooth in my writing if the only thing on my mind is hitting the target?
The idea is applicable to so many areas — from work, to success, to happiness, and to fulfillment.
Maybe we’re depressed as a society because we’re so overly focused on numbers. Happiness and fulfillment come as a byproduct of doing the good things we can every day. Perhaps the secret isn’t buried in numbers or studies. We’ll hit the golf ball solidly if we stop aiming so hard. It’s the eventual result of taking the right steps and doing the work we need to do regularly.
Our best chance at happiness isn’t to plan it out. It’s to accidentally trip over it on our way.
- Originally posted on Medium 10/4/20