Random Thoughts on Happiness

I stepped outside of a cold house on to the back patio and felt the warmth of the sun like a gentle embrace enfolding me. A feeling of calm came over me and a smile crept across my face. I was reminded how it's often the simplest things in life that can bring happiness. The spring sun, either after the gloom of winter or just being confined indoors for too long.

I heard someone say that keeping expectations low generally brings a higher level of happiness in life than always being disappointed at not meeting higher expectations set by yourself or others. That's not to say we shouldn't make goals, indeed having something to work towards is what makes life worth living, but keeping expectations reasonable means we're more likely to achieve and even exceed those goals, making the outcome more pleasing.

I've always been one to keep expectations low because I don't enjoy constantly being disappointed or frustrated, especially when it comes to other people. We have no control over others, after all, and when we try to assert control over them it only leads to resentment on their part and frustration on our own.

Recently my husband did something for me that pleasantly surprised me, because it showed he was thinking of me and putting himself out for the sake of my wellbeing, which he doesn't usually do, unless I specifically ask it of him. When I mentioned it to my daughter she laughed because she felt it was the least he could do as a common courtesy and my expectations were too low.

It got me wondering for a moment if my expectations were indeed too low and if I should expect more from him. However, the reality is that not everyone is going to have the same empathy levels as ourselves; in fact most don't. To expect that across the board is going to leave you disappointed more often than not. So there's no point in dismissing relationships just because you don't see eye to eye on everything.

There are things that would be a deal breaker for any relationship for me, any abusive or violent behaviour as an obvious example. There is a limit to lowering expectations; everything in moderation and all that jazz.

Returning to the topic of goal setting, while it's true we need purpose in life, there comes a point where we might need to recognise when a purpose is no longer serving us. I recently came across some examples with regards financial goal setting, but I feel like it goes for other life situations as well.

A chap was talking to a multi billionaire acquaintance and asking why he kept on going with his money building goals when he was already bringing in more than he could ever spend or need. His response was that it was for the challenge. Yet his family expressed that he wasn't really enjoying life or getting any happiness from his constant drive to gain more wealth.

Another comparison is Tom Anderson, the creator of My Space, and Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook. For all intents and purposes, Facebook is the more successful of these two ventures and continues to expand with the Metaverse. Interest in My Space waned and Tom sold it for a tidy sum of $580 million. He then went off travelling around the world doing photography and seemed pretty content with that, following a passion by the look of it. Meanwhile Mark Zuckerberg has the stresses of running and expanding a popular online business and seems to be dragged into court fairly often to try and defend or explain any dodgy stuff done by his business. He also has governments across the world putting pressure on him to censor things people do on his platforms. Not really a happy sounding life, if you ask me.

I see these kinds of things reflected in a lot of people's lives and I wonder how much we are affected by beliefs and perceptions around us when we attempt to define what we want from life and what will make us happy. Financial success is often held up as the gold standard, so is that why we strive for that? Or we might see what looks like an ideal life from a social media influencer and try to eminate that, not realising that what they portray to the world might not be the reality of their life, then wondering why it isn't working out for us.

I've watched someone give up on things they've worked towards and come close to achieving completion on because they've decided something else might be more fulfilling after seeing others happy in that. But they keep dropping those things one after another, because it's not making them happy like they hoped and they really just want to do and experience everything, even if it's beyond what they can manage, always searching for that greener patch of grass that will make them happy.

For many the idea of wealth equals freedom, but when asked what that looks like for them, they often can't answer. They usually come up with generic answers like "doing what I want, when I want" but can't say what it is they want to do. Or they say if they had lots of money they'd buy a Ferrari, because isn't that what rich people have? It makes you wonder how many people have actually stopped to reflect on themselves. Are we so easily over-ridden by our need to fit in and the perceptions we want others to have of us?

What things make you happy in life? If you had enough passive income to never have to work again, what would you do?