Most people will tell you that success makes people happy. In this episode, I will be turning this idea around on its head. Ultimately it’s not the success that makes you happy, but happiness that breeds success. Read on and tune in to find out more in this edition of Live It, Lead IT!
Happiness breeds success
Successful people are usually those who can focus on their task at hand. What that essentially means is that they are not full of anxiety or fear. Rather they are happy, and happiness breeds success. In my mind, the common denominator of those people who are happy is that they can achieve their own goals. Of course, if you have no goals, you cannot be successful.
What is happiness?
Happiness in this context doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to be successful in your company. There are many people out there who work an average job merely to pay the bills. They have a neutral feeling regarding their jobs and this is not their be all and end all. They have families, houses, they travel during their holidays and generall,y they have good experiences. When you ask them, they will tell you they have a good life. It is not necessary for success to be found in an organisation.
The importance of goals
The issue for most people and why they lack happiness is that they don’t have their goals at the forefront of their conscious mind. When you talk to people who are happy, you get a sense of their objectives very quickly. When you talk to people who are unhappy it can take a long time to get to their goals – because they haven’t thought about it. Life is not about finding yourself; it’s about creating yourself. If you have goals you know what why you are here on this planet. With your goals clearly in mind, it becomes much easier to move in the right direction, toward achieving them. For those people, they can see success day by day. Sometimes it might be a smaller success, sometimes a larger one. Either way, if you know why you are you here, you can tick boxes day by day. People with goals are generally happier.
In the organisational context
If you are working in an organisation, the same philosophy applies. If you are an achiever, you will have trained your brain from an early age to work on projects and see them through to the end. You will have conditioned your mind. People who are permanently successful are permanently happy because they achieve things. With such a mindset you will have developed your confidence. And in doing so, you will have fostered a happy state of mind. Happiness in such an organisational setting is key because when you’re happy, you are also calm. This is the kind of attitude you need on a workspace with others. With a calm state of mind, you are much more likely to be able to avoid anger and stress, restraining yourself from negative interactions with your colleagues. Combined with the attitude of achieving, you are on your way to success. People will be much more likely to want to be around you, and with the proof that you can provide value to your organisations in completing projects successfully, you’re much more likely to be promoted.
So success doesn’t make you happy. Happiness breeds success. Be an achiever and be happy!
 
Yours,
Olaf Kapinski