Only the journey matters…The destination is always overrated!
A few days back, a close friend called me and asked a question — Why is it that rich and successful people, who have everything desirable in their life, who are loved by so many, often depressed and sometimes take the extreme step of ending their lives. Our discussion obviously had the backdrop of the suicide by one of India’s finest young actors.
This depression and unhappiness with life, even after having achieved the pinnacle of success, is not limited to celebrities. Some of the most successful people in many different fields are depressed. An Assocham study conducted in the year 2018 showed than 42.5% of the Indian private sector employees were afflicted with general anxiety order or depression. The reason cited was work related stress and long work hours. Every year, over 2 lakh people commit suicide in India and around 20% of the number is students, sometimes even school going students!. That is shocking, especially for a nation that prides itself on its more superior family bonding and values compared to the west.
Why is it that prosperity is at an all-time high and technology has made human lives generally much easier than before but for some reason, people feel worse off and wronged by life all the time. When having a casual conversation with friends or colleagues, especially after a few drinks, the thing that is most heard is that “My life is screwed!. I don’t know what is wrong with my life”. I have often thought of asking “What is it that will make you truly happy?” but those words have never crossed my lips and maybe because I feared ruining the ‘pity party’ that ensues after one such question and everyone jumps in to prove that they are the ones who have been most wronged by life!.
For a few years in life, I went through similar phase wherein nothing seemed to satisfy me. It was in the middle of B-School when I was 26 years old, that I first went to see a psychologist. I described my problem saying that even though I made it into a top tier B-School of my choice and given that good things were happening in my life, the satisfaction was short lived and happiness arising of those events momentary. The psychologist heard my rant patiently and then gave a reassuring smile and said “I’m glad you are confronting your unhealthy feelings and trying to resolve them”. She then gave one of the most important pieces of advice in my life. She went on to say “Happiness is life comes from being able to effectively manage your expectations. And also, don’t focus too much on your targets. That dream job offer will not satisfy you if you do not enjoy the journey that leads you to getting that offer”.
I walked out of the session and felt as if a weight had been taken off my shoulders and felt happier all of a sudden. Exited my campus and walked around a mile to the beach and realized that much of my discontentment with life was due to the humongous expectations that I was constantly setting whenever I achieved a milestone in life. Thus, creating a cycle in life wherein I was constantly searching for the big thing in life without taking time and soaking in and relishing my small victories in life. The realization also dawned that my fixation with targets and life goals was unhealthy because I was not enjoying the process. And the realization dawned that the journey matters more than the destination. And since that day almost four years ago, have made a conscious attempt to enjoy the moment and enjoy the journey.
Nowadays I hear the same things from my colleagues and friends wherein almost everybody is unhappy because everyone feels that the journey to achieve one’s goal in life is too painstaking. Truth be said, the road to achieving anything in life that is worthwhile, will always be painful. Hurdles will always be there on the path to achieving it. Take anything you have ever wanted and achieved in life. For example, the hours of a sport that you have played to perfect the moves were no doubt painful, but since one enjoys the process, one sticks to it and ends up getting progressively better. And I am yet to meet a person who was unhappy because of the pain that mastering the sport caused that person. It’s then upon us to choose what are the things in life that we truly care about and what are the things in life that we will be willing to go through all the pain, failures and disappointment for.
Without enjoying the process of achieving something and accepting and cherishing the pain and failures that come along the way, one will always feel let down at achieving the goal or destination of that journey. For it takes years for one to realize that the moment at which one achieves the destination is fleeting and underwhelming at best and once one has achieved the goal, the perceived value of the goal in our mind reduces considerably, thereby reducing the value of our achievement and hence making the achievement seem very mundane. Thus, the happiness that one derives out of achieving a goal is short lived and when one compares the pain endured to get to the goal, to the short lived happiness that is achieved out of the achieving it, there is a sense of getting cheated by life and one goes back into their unhappy state very soon. This is why most of the times, a regular middle-class person who saves up to make the down payment on their dream home and takes a home loan for the balance amount, is happy when they first buy the house but start cribbing an year later about the EMIs they need to pay every month. This is because the fascination was with the home and they never enjoyed the process i.e. the work that was supposed to pay for it. One year after they purchase a house and the fascination with the new house is over and there is nothing more to add to the home in terms of the decorations/artifacts, the home becomes just like any other home and the all that is left is the loan repayments and people will start cribbing about them. That is not the way to attain lasting happiness but rather temporary ‘highs’ which are achieved momentarily.
To achieve lasting happiness in life, one needs to fall in love with the process. Appreciate the role of the hurdles in their path, learn to overcome them, take the failures that come along as steeping stones towards their goal. A goal achieved in this manner is the source of sustainable and long-term happiness and sense of fulfilment in life!. It is true of everything in life. Take a relationship for example. You want to get into any relationship with another person, and it can be any relation — romantic, friendship, professional or any other form of relationship. You work hard to establish a sense of trust and mutual fulfilment in any relationship and once you have entered into that relationship, the first result has been achieved — getting into the relationship. This happiness resulting out of this result is again short -lived and momentary. The goal then shifts to having a sustained and happy relationship. There will inevitably be disagreements and differences in that relationship. And one needs to work through those, day in and day out, and find common ground to take the relationship to the next level. Yes, that is tough and at times painful. But that is also the key to a healthy and fulfilling relationships that lead to mutual and lasting happiness. One sub-consciously decides whether putting in that additional effort into that relationship is worth their time and effort. When any relationship falls apart, that is always the reason, one of the people in the relationship decided that it was not worth the necessary effort to help resolve the differences.
One can apply the above process to any outcome or goal or destination that one is chasing in their lives. Every human being is wired different and every process is not going to be satisfying for everyone, and that is absolutely fine. One needs to choose their battles and choose those goals wherein they would enjoy the process and happily embrace the associated pains and setbacks that accompany it. Life is meant to be lived in and cherished in the present and without enjoying one’s present, one will not be able to enjoy the future result arising out of the process. For the meat of every story is in the journey, the destination is merely the side-effect of the process and it is a good high, not everlasting success. Fall in love with your journey!. That is all that matters. The destination of the journey is always overrated!
