The Meaning of Success

I reviewed The Happiness Trap last summer.  Subsequently I signed up for the newsletter issued by Russ Harris. The latest one contains some interesting comments on the "success trap."

The “Success” Trap 
What does the word “success” mean to you? When you hear “She is very successful” or “He’s made a success of himself” what does that conjure up for you? Our society generally defines success in terms of achieving goals: fame, wealth, status, respect; a big house, a luxury car, a prestigious job, a huge salary. When people achieve these things, our society tends to label them as “successful”. But if we buy into this popular notion of success, we set ourselves up for a lot of unnecessary suffering. 

How so? Well, this view of success inevitably pulls us into the goal-focused life - always striving to achieve the next goal: more money, larger house, better neighborhood, smarter clothes, slimmer body, bigger muscles, whiter teeth etc. And the illusion is, “When I achieve this, then I will finally be successful”. And of course, the corollary of that is “When I am successful, I will be happy.” The problem is: a) we may never achieve those goals, or they may be a long way off – which leads to chronic frustration and disappointment; and b) even if we do achieve them, they will not give us lasting happiness; usually they give us a brief moment of pleasure, satisfaction, joy – and then, we are focusing on the next goal. 

Furthermore, if you buy into this notion of success, it will put you under tremendous pressure - because you have to keep on achieving and achieving to maintain it. As long as you keep achieving those goals, then you are successful - ‘a winner’, ‘a high-achiever’. But if you stop achieving, then you are no longer successful; you are a ‘has-been’, or ‘a failure’ or ‘a loser’. It is this popular notion of success that leads to the widespread issue of “fragile self-esteem”. Fragile self-esteem is very common in high-performing professionals. These high-achievers often develop a strong positive self-image based on their performance. So as long as they perform well, they have high self-esteem. But as soon as their performance drops, their self-esteem comes tumbling down: from ‘winner’ to ‘loser’, from ‘high-achiever’ to ‘failure’. 

In The Happiness Trap, I suggested an alternative definition of success: success means living by your values. If we redefine success in this way, it makes life so much easier – because in any moment, we can act on our values – even though our goals may be a long way off. Suppose you want to change career and become a cardiac surgeon – well, you are looking at a minimum of ten years of your life before you can achieve this goal. That’s a long time. But suppose the core value underlying that goal is to help others. Well, you can act on that value over and over and over, all day, every day for the rest of your life – even if you never become a cardiac surgeon. 

By the conventional notion of success, Martin Luther King was not successful: he did not achieve his goal of equal rights for people of all skin colors. And yet – we remember, admire and respect him. Why? Because he stood for something: he lived by his values! And when living by our values becomes the definition of success, it means we can be instantly successful right now. All we need to do is act on our values. From this perspective, the mother who gives up her career to act on her values around nurturing and supporting her children is far more successful than the CEO who earns millions but completely neglects his values around being there for his kids. 

Albert Einstein put it this way: ‘Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.’ 

And Helen Keller put it like this: ‘I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.’ 

So next time your mind is beating you up for not being successful enough, try saying ‘Thanks mind!’ And then ask yourself ‘What’s a tiny little thing I can do right now, that’s consistent with my values?’ Then go ahead, and do it. And therein lies the secret of ‘instant success’. 

The Pursuit of Unhappiness

A lot of my reading centers on well-being and living a good life. In this vein I just started reading The Pursuit of Unhappiness: The Elusive Psychology of Well-Being, by Daniel W. Haybron. He makes a distinction between the approach the ancient Greeks took toward happiness and well-being versus that of the Enlightenment that I have not encountered before. I feel it is worth highlighting this difference before finishing the book. I plan to write a review after reading it. Below are several key quotes from early in the book. (Note these quotes are not contiguous.)

The ancients apparently took it as a given that individuals are not, in general, authorities about their own welfare. Quite opposite: most ancient philosophers followed Socrates’ lead in distinguishing ‘the many’ and ‘the wise,’ with the former and much larger class being, basically dolts. Aristotle notoriously maintained that some of us are so ill-fitted for self-governance that we are better off enslaved, with masters to look after us.

The spirit of modernity is rather different. Inspired by Enlightenment optimism about the individual’s powers of reason and self-government, modern liberals tend to believe in one or another form of the sovereignty or authority of the individual in matters of personal welfare: by and large, people know what’s best for them, and tend to act rationally in the promotion of their interests.

But what if it turns out that people don’t have this kind of authority? What if they frequently and predictably make serious mistakes about what matters in life, act irrationally, or otherwise err in ways that undercut their prospects for well-being? What if, as a result, they tend to botch their lives at an alarmingly high rate, in many cases being unwitting pursuers of unhappiness?

The central thesis of this book is that people probably do not enjoy a high degree of authority or competence in matters of personal welfare.

I’m sure the rest of The Pursuit of Unhappiness will flesh out the empirical case for Haybron’s thesis. I’ve read other books that report results of various studies which reveal the inability of the average person to recognize the effects of genetics, temperament, and subjectivity on decision-making. To me these findings don’t prove it is impossible to be objective, just that it’s work. Sometimes it’s hard work!

In any case, I’ll write more on this interesting book when I’ve finished it. Wanted to throw out these quotes as thought provokers.

Tennis and life

After years of playing tennis I've realized that I get more out of it than just physical exercise and releasing pent up energy or aggression. There are three other things. First, while I don't particularly like dancing (especially the kind where you just stand separate from your partner and gyrate aimlessly) tennis comes close to what others probably get out of ballroom dancing: fluidity of movement combined with a purpose. I've always admired Sampras and Federer for their effortless, graceful yet powerful movement. I've tried to emulate that.

Second, when you get deep into a match I find it's also like a form of meditation because you are so focused on one task that everything else falls away. When this happens we reach the “flow” state described by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

Third, one of my main goals in life is to find balance. In tennis it's integrating the mental challenges with the various physical challenges. Trying to find the right blend of power, touch, spin, tactics and even deception (by setting up to make it look like I'm going one way then going another at the last instant). Then there are the various challenges. How to handle a power hitter? How to handle a much younger player? How to pace yourself in a 2+ hour match in 90+ degree heat? How to play with an injury? How to play when your game is "off"? And how to handle a loss? I think a lot of this spills over into other parts of life.

Happiness vs. Vitality

I reviewed The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris a while ago. Just recently I received the latest newsletter from the author which had an interesting observation.

[I]f we believe that happiness is the same as feeling good, we are constantly going to be struggling. Expecting to feel good all the time is like expecting a crocodile to be your best friend. You’re soon going to be disappointed. In ACT, we generally stay away from using the term “happiness”, as so many people think it means “feeling good”. Instead, we talk about “vitality”: a sense of being fully alive and embracing each moment of life, regardless of how you are feeling in that moment. If we were to define happiness in ACT terms, we would define it as living a rich, full and meaningful life in which you feel the full range of human emotions; or as the sense of vitality and wellbeing that comes from living by your values (something the ancient Greeks called “eudemonia”).

I like this idea of vitality and eudemonia (also referred to as “flourishing”). In fact, I wrote a paper on the Greek concept of eudemonia. Edith Hamilton best summarized it in her The Greek Way as: “The exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope.”

Tips for maintaining objectivity

Here is one page summary of cognitive distortions thanks to Michael Prescott. Has some good advice!

The Happiness Trap Review

The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living by Russ Harris is one of the best self-help books I’ve ever read. Yes, that’s a bold claim, especially with how many books of this kind fill the shelves of bookstores. I’ve read a lot of these books over the years. Almost all of them offer variations on one of several themes. Think positively. Repeat affirmations to counter negative thoughts. Bolster your self-esteem. All of them, according to Harris, share the same trap. “To find happiness, we try to avoid or get rid of bad feelings, but the harder we try, the more bad feelings we create.” This trap comes from the shared definition of happiness as feeling good. The Happiness Trap adheres to a different definition of happiness: living a rich and meaningful life.

Living such a life doesn’t automatically mean we’re feeling good all the time. We will still have negative feelings and challenges to overcome. The goal of The Happiness Trap then is to give us strategies to deal with negative feelings without denying them. Harris offers six core principles.

1. Defusion. Painful or unpleasant thoughts are defused by various techniques such as labeling them. When one notices such a thought instead of suppressing or denying it we create some distance by saying “I’m having the thought that …” In doing so we put some distance between the thought and us. In other words, we strive for objectivity.

2. Expansion: consists of making room for unpleasant thoughts and feelings.

3. Connection: being fully aware of your here and now.

4. Distinguishing between your thinking self and observing self. The various techniques in The Happiness Trap get us out of our thinking self and into our observing self.

5. Values: what kind of person are you and want to be? What is significant and meaningful to you? What do you stand for?

6. Committed action. All of this business about being objective and mindfulness must be followed by a commitment to action if we truly want to change.

These principles form the core of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), developed by Steven Hays. While Hays and others have published a number of books on ACT they were written for therapists applying ACT to different conditions. The Happiness Trap translates ACT’s principles for laymen interested in applying these principles. As Harris points out ACT also stands for something else:

A – Accepting your thoughts and feelings and being present in the moment,

C – Connect with your values, and

T – Take effective action.

The Happiness Trap holds a lot more insights and techniques than I can do justice to here. Overall I like several aspects of The Happiness Trap and ACT.

1. They don’t try to suppress or ignore emotions. The recommended methods aim at honoring these emotions while trying to get beyond them.
2. They emphasize mindfulness and objectivity.
3. The end goal is to get us to act, not just to idly analyze our feelings.
4. Values play a key role because ultimately this is what motivates us to action: what is important to us.

As I said at the beginning The Happiness Trap has joined the small group of my favorite books. It offers a realistic guide with a number of helpful activates to get us to move beyond self-limiting thoughts and emotions so we can obtain, express and enjoy our values.

How to say No: Update

Back on December 31, 2007 I posted a review of The Power of a Positive No and outlined their basic method of yes-no-yes. This means when faced with saying no to someone you first state your interest (the first "yes"), say your no (that you can't or won't do what is requested) then end with an alternate proposal (the second "yes"). I have been applying this since that review and can report that it does help in two ways. It helps me to resist doing things I don't want to while still maintaining a relationship if the request is coming from some with whom I have a continuing relationship.

Here is an example from work. A broker I deal with on my accounts asked me to remove something from one of our reports (while copying two of my account contacts). I said that my company policy wouldn't allow it even if I agreed with him but that I would investigate it further by discussing it with our technical expert. The key is that I offered to write an e-mail or letter that indicates that the recommendation in our report is our best advice but does not affect how we look at the account. The broker thanked me for the offer but said he was willing to wait to see what happened with our technical expert's review. I believe my explanation about being limited by company policy but willing to help if I could kept the broker on my side and left him willing to see how things play out. I think if I had left off the final "yes?" the situation could have escalated.