The discussion we are about to embark upon will require quite a bit of reflection and self-introspection.  So, if you are not in the mood for some deep philosophical thinking, you may want to come back to this article at a later time.  Here is the dilemma.  I am assuming that if you are interested in this site it is because you are interested in being successful.  But why do you want to be successful?  An easy answer might be, because you want to be happy, right?  Well, what if I tell you that success may not necessarily bring you happiness?  What if everything we have been teaching you about being successful may actually contribute to you being unhappy?  Wow!  That would be a bummer wouldn’t it?

I recently came across the term “constructive dissatisfaction”.  Michael Eskew, CEO of UPS, mentioned in an article the importance of ”constructive dissatisfaction” in running a successful company. “Complacency is the enemy. You have to keep thinking you can do better”, he says.

In a way this makes sense.  Successful people are always striving to improve, to do better.  They use their dissatisfaction with the status quo to reach a higher level of achievement.  After all, no one achieves success by sitting around on the couch all day.  There is even an expression often used to describe the state of mind that leads to your demise: being “fat and happy”.

But pay attention to what this is really saying.   In order to be successful you have to always the dissatisfied?  You can’t be successful if you are “fat and happy”?  Is it not possible to be successful if you just find contentment with where you are and what you have? 

There has been a lot of fascinating studies about the subject of happiness.  The article Everybody Have Fun published in The New Yorker discusses some interesting findings from happiness research which basically suggests that what we typically associate with success does not lead to happiness.  The old cliché that money does not buy you happiness can actually be backed up by this research. 

For example, it is intriguing to see what impact winning the lottery has on people’s lives.  The happiness effect is quite short-lived, and most lottery winners find themselves either at the same level of happiness or less happy within six month of winning the lottery. This is very counter-intuitive.  After all, why do millions of people buy lottery tickets every week if it will not make you happier?

Derek Bok, in the book “The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn from the New Research on Well-Being“ points out some very interesting facts, as described below:

Over the past three and a half decades, real per-capita income in the United States has risen from just over seventeen thousand dollars to almost twenty-seven thousand dollars. During that same period, the average new home in the U.S. grew in size by almost fifty per cent; the number of cars in the country increased by more than a hundred and twenty million; the proportion of families owning personal computers rose from zero to seventy per cent; and so on. Yet, since the early seventies, the percentage of Americans who describe themselves as either “very happy” or “pretty happy” has remained virtually unchanged. Indeed, the average level of self-reported happiness, or “subjective well-being,” appears to have been flat going all the way back to the nineteen-fifties, when real per-capita income was less than half what it is today.

If the “success” of a country does not make its citizens happier, is there any point in pursuing all this success?

Happiness research has shown that humans get used to their new level of success very quickly and at that point the newly found success does not bring any more happiness then before success was achieved.  The only way to maintain happiness is to constantly reach higher levels of success.  Yes, it is a never ending pursuit.  Like a dog chasing its tails.

The psychology of happiness is quite complex and this topic is full of controversies. Can you be successful and happy?  I believe so.  The key is to understand that success is a never ending journey.  If you think success is a destination, you will likely be quite unhappy when you get there.