The secret to happiness?
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that happiness is difficult to achieve without strategy.
This might sound a bit strange until you start unpacking what strategy actually is.
Is it something done by military commanders? Business leaders? Well go look at the US invasion of Afghanistan and you won't find much strategy there!
Strategy is something that affects ordinary people every day of their lives. But how so?
Most people are pretty clear on what they want - more money, to live in a better house, a new job, to go on a nice holiday etc. Figuring that out is the easy part.
What can be a lot more difficult is answering the question "how?" For simple objectives, the how can be quite simple. Want a new iPhone? Save up each month until you can afford it, or buy it on credit (or cash if you are so inclined!)
But solving simple problems does not bring much joy into the human condition. Most likely your happiness and success rests on much loftier expectations. How can I launch a successful business? When can I retire? How do I raise my children?
These sorts of problems can degrade into a sort of quagmire and hang around for years on end. You can get into negative feedback loops. They can develop into Catch-22 type situations - you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Let me give you an example from my own life:
In my younger years I used to suffer from crippling social anxiety. For some reason I cannot now fathom, I was convinced that I would not be well received in social gatherings. I thought that I would say the wrong thing, or commit some social faux pas, and basically just embarrass myself.
And to be truthful I did - quite frequently. But the main reason I did that was because I was anxious. This led me to be rather self-obsessed, and instead of just being interested in other people and what they had to say, and being able to respond quite naturally to what they said, all my attention was on myself. As such I often missed non-verbal cues, or simply didn't properly understand the situation I was in and so would say or do something inappropriate.
This "feedback loop" involved two self-reinforcing pressures. My poor social performance feeding my anxiety and serving as further proof I was socially inept, and my crippling anxiety leading me to be somewhat narcissistic and not that pleasant to be around at times.
This problem hung around for many years and caused me much suffering. Like me, you probably have problems that have been lingering for many years, unsolved. Things that sit between you and your expectations for a better life.
Sometimes they naturally resolve, but quite often they do not. Often you have tried many different approaches to crack it, and have not yet been able to do that. So why is that?
It comes from a failure to identify the "crux" of the problem. The crux is where the interlocking forces have jammed together, creating a situation where no matter which direction you go in, they clap back against you and send you back to the beginning again.
It's like a game of snakes and ladders - only there aren't any ladders.
The secret to breaking free of the crux is two-fold:
- Correctly identifying the true cause and effect relationships in the problem
- Focusing enough of your resources against these things to relieve the pressure of the compounding forces
I'll give another example from my own life. I used to be an insomniac. Being unable to sleep in the daytime made me fatigued and groggy during the day. It was difficult to get things done and this stressed me out. The stress affected my sleep, and my diet. My poor diet also made my sleep worse. I also didn't know that stress burns up your nutrient stores in the body and can lead to deficiencies. I was also drinking to deal with the stress as well, which also negatively impacted my sleep.
The crux here was the feedback loop of 3 factors - diet, stress and alcohol. I was unable to solve this problem for years because I simply was not aware that those three things were inter-related. I did not understand the cause and effect relationship of diet - stress - sleep.
Just knowing this however was not enough. Because if I tried to improve my diet, I would encounter a stressful situation which would lead me to either drink or eat junk food. So to overcome this problem, I had to attack on all fronts. I quit drinking, ate better, went for walks to de-stress, changed some situations in my life to be less stressful, and took vitamin and mineral supplements.
All of these things together got me some wins. I had a few nights when I actually slept half the night. It wasn't a complete resolution of the problem, but it was good progress. I felt a lot happier and optimistic about the situation, which reduced my stress levels. I was also less tired in the daytime so was able to get more done, which also helped with the stress. Being less stressed meant I ate better, and wasn't burning my body out.
The key here is to identify the multiple factors at play, and then push against all of them simultaneously with enough force to overcome the feedback loop holding it all together. It's a bit like splitting an atom, or getting over the activation energy for a chemical reaction.
Knowing what those factors are can be tricky, and often it helps to have someone who has been there and done it to point the way. But the main mistake I see people doing is not focusing enough of their energy at multiple things simultaneously to shift things into a more stable, higher condition.
Identifying only one of the factors at play will usually be ineffective, because as you start trying to improve that part of the problem, the other factors are working in the opposing direction.