Success and happiness

8
Posted on 16 January 2010 Personal

Everyone’s idea of success and happiness are different. So measuring peoples success by the cars they drive, the businesses they own or the overseas holidays they go on is completely misguided. One moment while I was in Bangkok during my past holiday to South East Asia made me very aware of how caught up we get with others lives.

Houses along the river

I spotted an old man fishing with a handmade wooden rod and some fishing line. As we passed him, he looked up, gave us a big smile and carried on watching the river. Usually one would not bat an eye lid at this seemingly ordinary moment, but I had a long think about our friendly exchange. Here was a man, probably around 70 years old that owns little more than a tiny wooden house on a river in Bangkok. He probably lives off less money in a year than I make in 2 weeks. The amazing thing to me is he looked completely and utterly content with his life and is happy to sit and fish for hours on end and smile at the passing tourists.

You see, his definition and my definition of success and happiness are completely different. I now look at some of the people that I previously looked up to and wished I could of be in their position in terms of wealth and success and realise their goals, ambitions, success and happiness are a lot from mine. Some more than others, but the small lesson I’ve learnt is don’t focus about what others have, how happy they appear to be, or how successful they are. Learn from them, sure, but create your own path to success and happiness.

If you keep focusing and measuring yourself based on others, you’ll never reach your own goals and ultimately, success and happiness.

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  • http://www.expensivemistakescheapthrills.co.za ExMi

    awesome pic, and an even awesome-r sentiment.

    something we forget, as we get caught up in our efforts to become successful.

    so easy to forget how successful/lucky we already are.

  • Dusan

    Dear Jason

    Cool story. If you didn’t have chance thus far to read Siddhartha, written by Hermann Hesse. You may get some very precious clues pertaining to happiness and balance in life… Cheers!

  • Troyte Senior

    Maybe he just smiled because he was a friendly sort and the fishing gave him to work out how we was going to make the new sort of bomb he was always planning?

    You’re right that material wealth absolutely does not equal happiness, but at the same time I think it’s almost impossible to know whether someone you’ve met very briefly is happy or not. You’ve assigned values, thoughts and feelings to a person who you don’t know. At best that’s optimistic, at worst patronising.

  • Ian Paul Marshall

    Happiness, like you discovered is usually first revealed by being honest with yourself. Asking the big questions like:

    What do i like?
    What do I want?
    What is important to me?
    and

    What makes me happy?

    If that’s to difficult a question to answer we can always look at the things that are making unhappy and work from there.

    Thanks for the story. Very nice.

  • http://imod.co.za/ Chris M

    Quite interesting that you blogged about this. Just the other day I fired out a tweet along the lines of “How do you define happiness” and I got some really excellent answers back from my followers. Here are some of the tweets:

    “success == happiness in what ever you do. Peoples perception of your success is a different story”

    “Happiness. If u can say u are happy exactly the way things are then that is success. It can’t be measured.”

    “When you have enough leave to spend the money you have made by doing what u love.”

    “You have to compare your results with your original goal”

    “through the results of your actions I would say”

    “when you want for nothing, but need to remain your down to earth self.”

    I always find this such an interesting topic. The way you describe the fisherman looking up and smiling is perfect; There are not many people (especially where we stay) that do that. I catch the lift at Perspectives every single day and I would say that only 3-5% of my journeys up and down involve another human even making eye contact – doesn’t say too much does it.

    Anyway, I won’t go on, but felt I could add a little value here :)

  • http://www.jasonbagley.com Jason

    Thanks for the all the positive comments!

    @ExMi We always forget to be thankful what we have, because at one time or another, it was something we probably only hoped for!

    @Dusan, I’ll take a look at that book. Thanks for the suggestion.

    @Troyte Senior, slightly immature comment don’t you think? This story has nothing to do with that fisherman – how do you know I didn’t make him up? Think slightly bigger picture bud.

    @Ian Paul Marshall, that’s definitely a good start for people struggling to find out what makes them happy – ask yourself those questions you mentioned. Thanks!

    @Chris M, great examples of what people think happiness is – all different. As I said, we sometimes forget that!

  • http://www.bronsonharrington.com Bronson

    Great post and you’re 100% correct, with happiness, it’s different strokes for different folks.

    If you can wake up every morning with a feeling of inspiration and excitement, looking forward to what you have to do that day, I think you’re on the right track.

  • http://chriscalitz.com Chris Calitz

    I love it when people look at things from different perspectives and this post really does that. Made me think this morning. Great to always have positive attitude this makes it easier to do some self reflection and make sure your always growing!

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