The Hidden Gap Between Success and Joy

A few years ago, I didn’t fully understand the concept of happiness. I thought I had to talk to people to be happy, see them to be happy or even spend time with time. This wasn’t until I spoke with a friend of mine who left me with something to think about.

He said that happiness was a state of mind. This has stuck with me for as long as I can remember because it took me quite a long time to fully comprehend this and implement it in my life. For years now, I don’t think there has been a day I have been unhappy because of someone aside when someone dies or something really terrible happens. Every day, I wake up happy and make sure to stay happy for the entire day because life is too short for me to be sad for even a minute.

I have problems in my life, a lot actually. But I don’t let these problems dictate how I feel. I’ve grown up o learn that things pass with time and so there’s no need dwelling on such happenings in my life. Speaking of success and happiness, I’d say this topic is quite subjective and you’d have different people having different points of views on this topic. But I’d say that happiness and success are two different things but sometimes, there’s a very fine line between them.

For some people, success makes them happy and mostly with these kinds of people, they are those that have had to work hard on something they are very passionate about and it makes sense that their happiness lies there. Then there’s the group of people who are successful because they were born into families that were well positioned in society and with these people, you’d mostly find them not basing their happiness on their success but on other things.

I personally would say that it really depends on the situation. Just yesterday, I met with some investors to speak about a possible investment opportunity for my company. Did we secure the deal? Yes! Was it why I was expecting? No! Was I happy? No.
I secured the deal, but i wasn’t happy because that wasn’t my goal. Someone somewhere would probably throw a party for this kind of milestone but i was almost into tears because I didn’t meet my target. At the end of the, I had the accept what was and be grateful for what I have because I know that this is just the beginning.

This is to say that happiness isn’t always dependent on success . Happiness is a state of mind.

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all images belong to me.

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