Stop Chasing Success, Start Prioritising Happiness

Although you and I are different in many ways, we are also similar in many ways. One common trait we share is the desire to be happy. Yet in modern developed countries such as the UK, where we have created an environment that allows more freedom and opportunity to pursue happiness than any other time in history, increasing numbers of people are unhappy. Why?

There are, of course, many multifaceted contributing factors to our national levels of unhappiness, but in this article we shall explore just one. You will find this exploration particularly useful if you are, like me, a person who is hardworking and driven to succeed but feels that that very drive causes you stress and often takes away from your happiness instead of contributing towards it.

From personal experience and lots of thought, I conclude that an obsessive desire for success - that often brings about high levels of 'success' - does not translate to a happy life. With the increasing integration of social media into our daily lives reaching a level of near omnipotence, this topic is important to discuss more than ever before.

When we live in a time of high freedom and opportunity, like today, it becomes more important for us to think about what we are prioritising in our lives. For much of human history, this thought process wasn't important because the priority of our lives was to get by and to survive. Today many of us are gifted not to have to worry about getting by, not to have to commit our days to tasks that will merely support our survival. We have a choice in how we spend our time and shape our lives. Without consciously thinking about this and proactively shaping our lives, we run the risk of either:

Falling into apathy, wasting our time watching TV, scrolling through social media, and working in jobs we don't really enjoy to pay for things we don't really need, and seeking only short-term sensual pleasure to find 'joy'.

Aggressively pushing ourselves to reach the levels of 'success' somebody on social media tells us we can and should reach if we just work hard - to make ourselves feel worthy.

Neither of these pathways leads to happiness and will most likely lead us to look back on our lives - if we are lucky enough to live to an old age - with regret.

I spent my young adult days living hedonistically. Until about the age of 25, I did nothing more than live for the moment and pursue sensual pleasure. I worked for nothing more than to make money so I could enjoy the luxuries of life and - not with conscious awareness at the time - suppress my emotions with alcohol.

At the age of 25, I left the UK military and spent 3 years travelling. To cut a long story short, I had many philosophical and spiritual experiences during that time that made me change the focus of my life. The version of me that came out of that experience was very different from the version that went in. I was no longer an aimless person just trying to have fun and find sensual pleasure, I was now passionate and driven to achieve.

I truly believed I had cracked it. My experience with monks and different communities had taught me that the true meaning of life is to be happy and that we find true happiness by being good people, by being of service to others. Considering my life and opportunities, I knew that the way I could make a difference to others and make my way in the world was through business. Being a citizen of the UK makes it relatively easy - compared to other places around the world - to get into and start business.

Having direction and focus in my life unlocked a fire and energy in me I hadn't experienced before. It was like I had tapped into a new energy source - purpose. I quit drinking - something I had struggled with for 7 years - developed a thirst for learning, and started achieving things the previous version of me didn't think were possible. Going from being aimless to a passionate goal-driven person was truly transformative in my life. In the book Psycho-Cybernetics, author Maxwell Maltz explains that humans are like bikes. We are goal-driven beings, so when, like a bike, we are progressing towards something we are stable and balanced. But when we stop making progress towards something and become stationary, like a bike, we become unbalanced and fall over. I'm not suggesting that you fall over a lot when you're not moving towards a goal, but that you're not your optimal self, you're unbalanced or feel like 'something's missing'.

The story is not, however, all sun and roses. Being goal-driven pushed me into business - something that I am grateful for to this day - but I became very UNHAPPY with my first business. To again cut a long story short, I had my first business for five years. It was successful, it doubled in size and profit every year, had a great reputation and a great team. To the outside world, it was a shining first business success story. But for me, it was three chapters - Great, Not Great, Terrible. From years 1-2, I LOVED it. From years 2-4, I felt like an imposter and highly stressed, and in year 4-5, I was borderline depressed. That stress, tiredness, and depression came about because - so I believed at the time - I was pursuing goals.

This depression was worse than anything I had experienced when I was living the hedonistic lifestyle. Sure, I had plenty of times where I felt empty, plenty of times where I didn't like myself, but I had never been close to feeling the pressure I felt on my shoulders whilst pursuing self-imposed goals. When I closed that business, I felt like I had two choices.

Go back to the non-goal-driven lifestyle where I didn't feel particularly fulfilled but I also didn't put any pressure on myself. The easier lifestyle.

Carry on trying to pursue these big lofty goals to give my life meaning but risk again feeling highly stressed and getting burnt out.

Which of those is more appealing? If you've experienced burnout and depression or borderline depression from pushing yourself too hard and putting too much pressure on yourself, you know the more appealing is option one.

But there is another choice, it's the choice I made, and I know it's the choice I had to make. If I hadn't I would be unhappy now.

I chose to be happy. To be happy, I had to go back to the basics, look at my decisions, look at my motivation, and look at my actions. I had to understand what I TRULY want in my life and what I had done to prevent that from happening to date.

My biggest realisation and, if you are still reading, my gift to you dear reader, is that I was pursuing 'success' not happiness. I fell into this trap without realising because I was lacking self-confidence - as I still do much of the time because like you I am a human - and didn't believe I was worthy of happiness. Because I didn't believe I was worthy of happiness, instead of listening to my instincts, pursuing my true goals, and shaping my business to be something that made me happy AS WELL as my team and customers, I built a lifestyle and business where other people won but I lost. All of this was done through a weird internal justification process that sounded something like this:

"You're doing the right thing because you're helping other people."

"You have to work ridiculously hard because that's the only way you can reach and justify being successful."

"There are other people that are better than you, you have to emulate them to at least keep up or you'll get behind and lose everything."

Those three inner dialogues, my friend, are a recipe for stress, burnout, and unhappiness. If you have voices like or similar to this and they are playing a major role in your daily actions and decision making, you have to do some work on yourself. When you let these voices persist and dictate, you will stay stuck on a vicious rollercoaster between moving towards goals but feeling highly stressed, to dropping all of your goals - to feel relief - but then feeling empty.

Ultimately, you don't want to be successful, you want to be happy. When you tell yourself you want to be successful, you're really telling yourself you want to be happy. Only you truly know what will make you happy. Each of us is here for a different purpose. Each of us has different strengths, behaviours, traits, and ways of thinking that enable us to make a positive difference in the lives of others. Finding out what they are and crafting your life to be using your strengths and making a difference is the purpose of your life. The more of this you do, the more fulfilled and happy you feel in life. There is a higher consciousness part of you that knows what this is and is quietly nagging away at you in the background of your mind to explore and do more of it. The more you tune into and trust that part of your mind, the more you can shape your life to be a happy one.

As you shift from living a comfortable to a goal-driven life though, you have to be careful. There is a part of your mind that likes to tell you you aren't good enough and don't deserve to be happy. If you let this part of your mind dictate, your goals can quickly become hijacked and before you know it, instead of pursuing what will make you happy, you are relentlessly pursuing what you think will justify your existence as a person. You will be working too much, constantly telling yourself you're not doing well enough and - if you are in business - probably underselling yourself and undercharging.

So if you've made the jump from a life of comfort to a goal-driven life, I salute you. But remember, you're not really pursuing 'success', you're pursuing happiness and only you know what the outcomes of that look like.