Russ Wallace

Three Elements to Happiness

Just had a great conversation with my friend, Ajit Verghese, an excellent startup consultant, about the decisions involved in being happy.

Ajit was mentioning how so often we materialize our objectives so that we can gain a firmer grasp of them, see them more clearly in our heads: to be happy, I’ll need x dollars or y position or z degree. The problem is that by materializing the goal, it becomes more definite but it also becomes finite. So when the goal is achieved, you’re left wondering what’s next.

I’m convinced there are three elements of the state of being happy, and the trick is choosing to keep them all present, all the time:

1. You’ve decided on a target, where you want to be. This is essential.
2. But more than that, you’ve convinced yourself that it’s something that you genuinely, even desperately, want. It can’t just be something that’s easy or not thrilling or won’t change your life. You’ve decided that if you hit that target, everything will change.
3. You know you’re on the right path to achieving that target. The time it takes to get there doesn’t matter; it just matters that you feel progress toward the target in a short enough time frame to be satisfying.

The key, really, is staying on element 3 as long as possible, since the chase (as long it meaningfully progresses) is the most satisfying part.

And one way to do that is to constantly shift element 1, so that before you hit the initial target you have a new one.

The rub is number 2: when you’re constantly shifting targets, it’s harder to convince yourself that each one is all that important. After all, you achieved the last one, and you’re still not experiencing that “life changing” sensation (I don’t believe anyone 100% recognizes, in the moment, a life changing moment; it’s usually after the fact).

This is all to say that goal-setting, which I think is crucial to direction and purpose in life and therefore to happiness, is a difficult balancing game. You want to set exciting goals that inspire you but that won’t let you down once achieved. I haven’t experienced this yet, but many seem to feel this way about financial goals: the fun was the chase, not the achievement. Steven Covey argues for principles as goals: living according to those principles is the target, and Benjamin Franklin-like, you should treat each day as an attempt to more perfectly do so.

I’d like to say that’s my satisfying conclusion, but the reality is I’m still targeting a few material things to keep me going.

In the interim, below is a calming picture of happiness from Austin:

What’s the point?

My sister asked today if I would ever go back to practicing law, and I mentioned that I had recently done some legal work for friends that I really enjoyed. So there was a possibility.

This raised the question of why I quit in the first place: what was the point?

I’m not convinced that it’s possible to articulate with total confidence why I make big decisions, only how. Often something just irks me, like an itch I have to scratch. It doesn’t make sense to me to live with that itch, even if scratching it seems like it will set me back. And when I wake up every day with the same itch—nothing as dramatic as depression, or being miserable at work, or any of the superlative emotions that Hollywood would have everyone believe are necessary for change—at some point I know it’s time.

I believe, but don’t yet have enough evidence to be authoritative, that I am happier when I respond to the itches my body and mind create. I am working towards, but have not yet completely achieved, the perspective that what I should be measuring is not my progress in my career (or earnings) as compared with my peers. Nor is it the number of adventures or journeys or risks I have taken, even though I frequently value those things above material gain.

What I believe is most important is maximizing the number of times I go after something I really want to be or achieve. And minimizing the amount of time I spend working on things that I know are not part of who I want to be.

I value most the future I am creating, and second-most the way that I am currently spending my time. I am still learning the best way to balance those two against one another, but I know with certainty that I stand by the major decisions I have made that set me on this path. They are decisions I would want my grandchildren to make given the situation, because they responded to amorphous, confusing but deeply personal urges that came from within me and nowhere else. It seems to me that that’s the only way to make big decisions.

And in practical career terms, I’m still not sure I can say what the point was except that it was a decision I knew I had to make.