How To Succeed In Life And Be Happy
Success is something that we all want. Whether it is financial or academic success, it is always something that we want to achieve no matter how hard it might prove to be. Yet not everyone considers themselves successful. There are quite a lot of people who think they haven't achieved what they think they deserve. There are a lot of reasons why so many people consider themselves unsuccessful. Some people have unrealistic expectations of life. There are many people who think they have a right to be rich and famous but when you examine them you see that they are not trying hard enough. If they are not trying hard enough that means they probably don't want those things that they think they want. The modern world tends to put people in a situation where they are constantly trying to fulfill desires that are not real desires. Take social media for example. Everyday hundreds of millions of people spend many hours on these various social media sites. Everyone there is trying to get more likes, retweets, shares, etc. Now it is understandable for those influencers who have found a way to monetize their social media accounts through ads, to be so desperate to get more interactions because it makes financial sence to have a wider audience for them. But what about the average person? Why are they so much fixated on getting likes and comments?
The answer lies in the unhealthy way in which most people live their lives today. Instead of working on a meaningful project that can improve the lives of other humans many are scrolling down the endless pages of social media sites. Tech giants have found creative ways to make their sites more and more appealing so that the end users end up being enslaved to these social media sites. The big winners are tech giants, who can run millions of ads on their sites and make a huge amount of money. The losers are people who waste so much of their time on these sites trying to satisfy a false sense of emptiness within them that is created as a result of seeking attention that they don't necessarily need, from strangers.
If we truly want to be successful, first we have to define success. We should be able to think about what success means to us and reject the false sense of success that can be found in having a huge following in social media. Of course social media sites are very important and are probably the greatest invention of the twenty first century but the way most people interact with them causes them to become depressed. There is nothing wrong in wanting to be understood and appreciated by a lot of people. In fact that is a healthy thing. But the obsession with the "likes" can be detrimental to a fulfilling life.
The same is true about being rich. Having lots and lots of money is really good but can money alone make us happy? Of course not. Everyone needs to have enough money to buy enough food and afford a place to live in and do things that they enjoy but what are we going to do with our extra money? Obsession with being rich is also unhealthy. There are many rich people who would gladly change places with some poor people.
The things that really are more important things in life are family and friends. Spending time with family is the most enjoyable thing in life. So if we work all the time to make lots of money but we don't have any time for our family what are we really achieving? We might eventually become rich some day but all the time that could have been spent with our family has passed and now we can't really get those times back. It is important that we define our priorities carefully and allocate the proper amount of time to each priority.
Being happy has nothing to do with outward things. Happiness is a state of mind that we experience when we are living in the moment. Instead of worrying about the future or regretting the past why not appreciate the beautiful present moment. Humans are not time travelers. No matter how hard you blame yourself for what you did or didn't do in the past you can't change it. The future is unknown. Nobody knows what will happen in the future so instead of worrying about it we should always be consciously experiencing the present moment. I am not saying that you should never think about the past or the future. Nothing can be further from what I am saying than that. In fact I think we should learn from our past experiences and plan for the future. But that is different from regretting or worrying. Everyone makes mistakes but we should learn from them. For example, think of a mountaineer who wanted to climb a high mountain in his youth. He might have failed to to it when he was young. Should he give up mountain climbing forever and always think about his failures in the past? No. He should try it again if he still likes the idea of mountaineering. That was an analogy that is useful when describing how it is a bad idea to have negative feelings about the past. But what about the future? Many people are constantly worrying about the future and missing the important present moment. Of course this is wrong. We should plan for the future but we should not worry about it.
Disclaimer:
I am not a psychologist. This article is for entertainment purposes only.
