Can We Start the Young on a Happiness Path?

I was a very happy child. I had all sorts of interests and I loved to play outdoors. As I grew, my greatest pleasures were being in the mountains and hiking streams to fish. I loved skiing. I loved almost any kind of sport with a ball. I didn’t love studying so much.

As I progressed through college and tried my hand at accounting and after college, at law, I found I didn’t love detail too much.  I wanted to be involved in bigger ideas with more creativity.  Sales management proved to be my forte.  But the other thing I discovered much later was that achievement, acquisition, and money didn’t really bring happiness.  They brought me great buzzes and started me on my next quest for more.

What I eventually learned was that I had a real desire to be connected with the outdoors. I had a real need to express myself and contribute what I had learned for the improvement of the lives of others. These types of activities give me sustained happiness that have very little to do with material acquisitions.

I have found that engaging in my passions is what makes my life feel purposeful. Daniel Goleman in Emotional Intelligence says that flow is the highest form of emotional intelligence. Neurologists will tell you that engaging in activities that you love and find a challenge create our happiness brain chemical, dopamine.

My 25 year old daughter was developed with the principals on which I developed. She is very accomplished but realizes early that achievement has little to do with happiness.  We agree that it would be great to give children an idea early on that happiness and the path to achievement might be different.  However, they would be the same if your life became about pursuing your passions without primary concern for fame and fortune.

We have to be practical and earn a living, but a lot of people earn a living pursuing their passions.  Children need to learn and advance through the educational system, but we need to pay real attention to their true aptitudes and what really excites them. Finding things that excite them and not just demanding they follow the grades, college, job routine to find happiness might create very inspired young adults.

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See Life Coaching to get on track with some of the ways to find excitement in your life.

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