Success and Happiness: Can We Have Them Both? – Part 1

December 29th, 2021

No matter if rich or poor, educated or unread, no matter religion or nationality, people actively pursue happiness throughout their adult life. We all want to be happy and we try so hard to get there. It is the most common goal on the planet throughout history.

The Pursuit of Happiness

Today we have become used to thinking, “I will be happy when I reach this or that position at work. I will be happy when I have more money. I will be happy when I get married to this or that person.” And we strive to fulfill these goals, performing the necessary actions, but as time passes the flavor of happiness in our lives becomes even vaguer. Even if we feel happy for a moment, the state fades away like a ghost, and we once again start chasing the next achievement in order to feel happy again. We habitually race for success in order to (eventually) become happy.

Success, therefore, has become one of the most talked about subjects these days because we believe that it brings happiness. We have assigned a lot of importance to success, yet reality shows that, in fact, success in itself doesn’t hold much real value for us. Studies regarding our physiology show that it has very little impact on our lives when compared with that of happiness.

The Engine of Life

In my studies of ancient spiritual systems, I discovered a common and united perspective; they all say that the inherent state of each and every person is one of overwhelming and deeply fulfilling happiness. The engine of life, they say, IS happiness. And the one that is able to discover this secret that is embedded in the foundation of his being, will always be successful in life.

I was wondering, could it really be that we are looking at these aspects of life upside down? Because, if the causality is actually the other way around, we are going against the flow of life itself, the immediate consequence of this error being that the more we try to push towards success, the more we dry out the happiness. The close resemblance of this scenario to our experience of striving for success in order to be happy, is clear.

So, can we have both success and happiness?

The answer I have found in texts of ancient wisdom is: Yes, but in reverse order! First, we must discover inner happiness and then success naturally follows.

And how can we reach this inherent happiness? The ancient systems were saying that all our experiences, thoughts, feelings, reactions are interwoven by the associative function of our consciousness – the reasoning function – which creates a kind of ‘labyrinth’ that entraps our happiness and conditions it.

All this sounded amazing, but I wanted to experience it, to have proof. The texts mentioned that if one can successfully cancel, even for a moment, the inner buzz of reactivity to life situations then the maze disappears. If they’re right, if happiness is first, if happiness is actually stored in the background of everything I am, it should spring out naturally if I manage to stop the inner noise and agitation. Happiness should spring out by itself and success would naturally follow. At least that was the theory.

The fruits of training

Throughout my years of practice I did experiments, I had many experiences and did an immense amount of training. The conclusion of it all is that what they said is true: to the extent that we can discover the underlying happiness by cancelling the inner agitation, we have the power needed to drive towards success in the various actions that we do. In the same degree that our inner happiness is clouded by our own reactivity to life situations and preconceived ideas, we also lack the necessary force to go towards success.

There are also exceptional life situations, in certain auspicious conditions, where some can spontaneously experience this inherent state of happiness (even without specific spiritual practice). For instance, when you get a strong enough shock, either good or bad, but that surpasses a certain intensity, the mind stops completely and becomes kind of suspended. Then, from within, comes an unexplainable very refined state of happiness. Some people even call it bliss because it is extremely pure and intense at the same time. Sometimes people are touched by this experience so strongly they talk and write books about this enormous revelation for the rest of their life.

A shift of perspective

The conclusion here is that in order to have both, we first need to disrupt the illusion of a causal connection that links success and happiness in that order. We need to make anything that exists between us and our happiness vanishes, because happiness is the real nature of our being.

Once we disrupt this illusion, our entire life perspective shifts and our new position allows us to experience happiness and success simultaneously. When we discover the source of happiness within our being, unconditioned by anything external, everything we start to do is mysteriously touched by success.

Even a little daily practice is helpful

Studies show that even a small daily practice of twenty minutes concentration of the attention significantly diminishes the inner noise and unveils the state of inherent happiness. Twenty minutes per day is very little, but still a remarkable great amount of happiness ‘comes through’. It was noticed that people such a stable, daily meditation practice also started to have success in everything they did in their life.

Great observations, but there is still a problem here… I said that practically we all have, let’s say, a tank full of happiness, but it is covered by something that we need to successfully remove. How come that I came back to the initial position? Again, we have success in front and as a condition to access happiness.

Read part 2 of Success and Happiness: Can we have them both?