What Should Come First - Success or Happiness?

This isn’t going to be a What comes first – the chicken or the egg? debate. There is some excellent data that answers our title question: What Should Come First ... Success or Happiness? Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky, along with several colleagues from the University of California, analyzed the results of 211studies addressing this issue. They wanted to know: Are happy people more successful? And does happiness precede success?

The results of their extensive research showed that happiness leads to greater success. Happy people have more positive moods, and positive moods prompt people to work actively and reach new goals. Happy people are more productive, more innovative, communicate better, are more respected, more appreciated, more optimistic, more energetic, more likable, more confident, and more sociable. WOW—what an impressive list! All of these attributes help make us more successful. Happy people also experience less stress, yet with a million workers per day missing work due to stress, it’s clear there are a lot of unhappy people out there.

In a business world where companies are downsizing their staff, this means they are also upsizing the workloads for those employees who remain. The greater the demand placed on employees, the greater the potential for even more stress, and more stress leads to less happiness. Add to that supporting your family, unexpected expenses, rising household costs, increasing health insurance premiums, and a shaky economy, and the priority of trying to be happy often takes a distant second place to merely surviving. The attitude of I don’t have time to worry about being happy—I’m too busy working becomes the mindset.

I remember years ago, when billionaire Howard Hughes died, a reporter asked, “How much money did Mr. Hughes leave behind?” The person responded, “All of it.” What a great answer. If I can share anything with you today, it would be the importance of your happiness. Your happiness will energize you in everything you do, so work on that. Lighten up. Laugh more. Start counting your blessings. Be grateful. Be optimistic. Your stress level will go down, your productivity will go up, and everyone around you will be better off because of your happiness. Remember—happy people have problems too; they just handle them differently.

One last bit of advice: don’t be a professional depression... a person who just can’t seem to find the positive in anything. Happiness starts with the words you speak. So before opening your mouth to tell someone the traffic was terrible, the clerk at the store was rude, the bank bounced your check, you couldn’t find a parking space close to the store, or you missed your plane—understand that you are now reliving the bad things that just happened to you, allowing them to live on. You just multiplied their effects. Don’t do that. It brings you down again and also brings down the person you’re sharing them with—and that’s not fair.

At the end of the day,

our happiness

and the happiness of our family

are all that truly matter.

Everything else is commentary.