Findings suggests that people are far happier being busy than being idle. Ofcourse, people may not always prefer busyness over idleness. People who feel overworked, for example, may prefer doing something. Further, people may not be happy, if they are kept busy for busyness's sake - as we just saw, people need a reason to be busy. However, so long as these relatively simple questions are met, it appears that people prefer doing something to doing nothing.
And if people don't just have a reason to be busy but find what they are doing to be meaningful, then there's an even greater chance they would be happy.
Most of us can; of course readily relate to the idea that being meaningfully busy is better than being meaninglessly busy. This is because we know, from personal experience, that we are happier doing something meaningful than doing something meaningless.
The Fact that we are happier when we are busy than when not, and the fact that we are happier when doing something meaningful rather than meaningless - has a very important implication. It suggests that we don't need to depend on outcomes for happiness - we could not derive all our happiness from the process of working towards outcomes.
Of course, the type of emotions we experience if we delink happiness from outcomes, would change. We'd perhaps rarely feel Hubristic or Authentic pride, because they are outcome- based and not process-based emotions.
However, in the bargain, we'd rarely feel outcome based negative emotions, such as dejection or shame. We'd perhaps also feel much more absorbed and at peace with our lives, because those emotions are more likely when we focus on deriving happiness from process ( as opposed to outcomes).
The second concern then, it seems that delinking happiness from outcomes will not lead to never feeling happy again. This is because outcomes are only source of happiness, the other being the process of working towards outcomes. That takes care of the first concern with delinking towards outcomes.
The reason that delinking Happiness from outcomes doesn't mean you would become indifferent to life ( and not know which goal to pursue ). It has to do with a seemingly subtle but actually very important difference: JUDGING OUTCOMES AFTER THEY HAVE OCCURED AND NOT BEFORE.
Source : If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Happy” by Raj Raghunathan.
Commenti