By Mark Kaplan / February 20, 2020
Happiness and discipline would seem to be topics for two different books. When you see the scientific evidence that happiness is stimulated by behaviors and the behaviors are those that grow us, we start closing the loop.
How Long Does Happiness Last?
Happiness is not external. It is also not eternal if we don’t work on it continuously. There is no happy ever after from meeting a Prince or reaching a specific goal. Lottery winners go broke and stars self-destruct.
Happiness is more of a process than a finish line. Growth behaviors and what Nature would call “survival opportunities” occur because we are consciously devoting our time to something that matters. The growth may feel like our purpose and it may bring meaning to our lives.
What Are the Growth Behaviors?
Nature is concerned that we survive and promulgate better genes. This requires improving our economic, social, and community status. We are rewarded with dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins when we improve the likelihood we can pay our rent, support our families, contribute to the common good and build our fitness.
The brain stimulates the reward chemicals for engaging, increasing our abilities, increasing our capabilities, and taking satisfaction in our improvement. The best growth behaviors are learning, creating, contributing, getting healthy, and fitness.
Why Discipline is Important
Focus on important activities without distraction often drops us into the state of flow. It is our highest state of learning and creativity. Flow occurs when we challenge our capabilities. Steven Kotler, author of The Rise of Superman, says we only need to improve our capabilities by 4% to stay in flow.
We need discipline to schedule our sessions. We need discipline to eliminate distractions. We need discipline to develop the necessary energy with good habits of nutrition, exercise, and rest. We need discipline to avoid the negative behaviors that often distract us from our goals.
How Happiness and Discipline Improve Our Work Life Balance
The growth behaviors can make us more valuable in our work or to our workplace. Creativity may be the fastest process to become valuable as we are solving problems or creating something that would benefit others. Contributing can elevate our economic value, our social status, our mating opportunities, and our value to mankind. Health and fitness create energy and longevity without illness or pain.
These are all behaviors of self-actualization. We might think we have a work life and a personal life, but really we have one life. Our growth in this life affects both our work and our personal life satisfaction. We need happiness in work and our personal life for balance and life satisfaction.
Develop a Few Key Habits and the Rest Will Follow
The best way to make a change is to begin with small steps. Numerous studies have shown that changing how we eat, beginning an exercise program, or learning how to study, i.e., lead to an endless change of habits as we experience happiness with our progress.
Happiness is in the growth. We get rewards along the way as we make progress toward our goals. We may get the car of our dreams, the position, we desire, a new house, or a wonderful vacation as perks for our continuing growth.
Return to the Home Page
See Post Happiness, Fitness, and Mindfulness
See Post How We Enjoy Intensity without Stress
See Post Life Style and Work Life Balance
See Post Creativity Can Be Career Changing
See Post Increasing the Flow in Your Life