Happiness & Success: The Chicken & Egg of Business

Surely you know the old question “which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

The same can be asked about happiness and success… only there is a definitive answer to the latter.

Part of you may feel like you will find happiness once you have found success. That’s basic human nature honestly, because it’s the motivation that pushes you to achieve goals.

This desire to succeed is scalable, from craving chocolate cake (and the satisfaction of eating said chocolate cake) to the ambitious decision to earn a $100k+/year salary.

Whatever your desires are, you are right. You will feel happy achieving those goals. But it will never be enough. You’ll always want more. And sometimes, you put so much importance on goal-based happiness that you neglect the things along the way that would give you a deeper sense of happiness.

Let’s say you’re on a diet and you crave chocolate cake. Then you have to determine which would make you happier… sticking to the diet and achieving a milestone, or tasting that sweet chocolate cake?

The (maybe-not-so) surprising truth is that success doesn’t always come before happiness actually. True happiness is the joy we feel striving for our full potential. It really is as simple as stopping to smell the roses, or stopping to appreciate the full effort that you’re putting in.

So instead of expecting to find happiness at Point B, enjoy the journey. As long as you are on a path that you choose, there is always something to be happy about.

More importantly, the most successful people are also the happiest people… and not because of their success. On the contrary, this is what pushes them to succeed. Happiness and success correlate, rather than either causing the other.

Go. Do what makes you happy. You’ll succeed 