So many times, people get obsessed with the thoughts of end results and they tend to disregard the real path to success and happiness. A friend of mine keeps telling me that if my novel clicks, I would become a star. I secretly laugh at his thoughts. Well, the world doesn’t work that way.
What most people postulate is – since they are doing hard work, therefore with a reasonable amount of luck, they should get the reward. And game over. I wonder why they don’t buy lottery tickets – Lottery won and life over. Or may be they do, but that is not important. The point is – such results can never give you long term happiness, a short one may be. A study conducted on the lottery winners in 1978 by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that the overall happiness of the winners spiked when they won but returned to the pre-winning levels only in a matter of few months. The study tells how materialistic awards are irrelevant in pursuit of happiness.
Success is often mistaken as a form of achievement. You achieve it and then you relax. But that’s not true. Success is as much intrinsic as it is extrinsic in nature, perhaps even more. It is the intrinsic feeling that you cherish every day. Therefore, if you are not enjoying what you are doing, there is no way you are going to be happy, no matter how big the reward is. In fact in that case your life would be just like a lottery winner but with a lot more effort and wastage of time. That can never make you feel proud of yourself.
The real success therefore is in sync with happiness. You enjoy every moment of what you do. That doesn’t mean you don’t face difficulties but you face them boldly. You achieve perfection and not rewards. Rewards will follow themselves, you do not have to worry about that. Once you start chasing them, you lose the state of perfection. But if you do not lose the state of perfection you experience the highest levels of satisfaction. And remember at the end of your life, that satisfaction will be your biggest reward.
Deepak Rana 