For those readers who’ve been following this site for a while, you know that I’m big on the subject of happiness (happiness project ^[1]). I’m blown away by the concept of happiness, its presence on everyone’s goals list, its potential, and how happiness can improve the quality of our lives, or at least the quality of our outlook.

I’ve previously defined happiness ^[2] as:

“Happiness is being the creator of your experience, choosing to take pleasure in what you have, right now, regardless of the circumstances, while being the best you that you can be.”

I still stand by this definition. I believe that we make happiness for ourselves by deciding what it is that we’ll choose to take pleasure in. Today’s mussar (self-improvement) class with Rabbi Noach Orlowek provided me with some impressive insights.

Danger of Happiness

Rabbi Orlowek pointed out that “Happiness as a goal can be very dangerous.” If chocolate is what makes you happy, which is perfectly reasonable, and you have diabetes, then chocolate will kill you. It’s understandable why you would keep eating the chocolate, because you’ve impressed upon yourself that this, for you, is happiness, and why bother living if you cannot be happy?

There are plenty of examples in which happiness can be detrimental to your health and to many other aspects of your life. Just think cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs. Such things may give you extreme sensations of pleasure and may make you happy. You may not want to live without this happiness, but what may happen is that you will literally not live if you indulge and experience some very bad luck.

The very same concept applies to mind, body, and soul. Some people might say video games make them happy, some might say pornography, or television, or any other wide array of things. Some of those sources might be ambiguous as to their harm/benefits, and others may very clearly stand out as bad, but you’ll do them anyway.

Happiness: An Asset, Not A Goal

When we look at happiness as a goal to achieve, we leave ourselves open to some detrimental decisions as to what we’ll allow to pass as happiness. If we look at happiness as an asset, something that gives us energy, and puts us in a great mood, then we will be able to use this asset of energy in order to accomplish our real goals.

Take my goal for instance; to operate with the greatest good of all in mind. This goal requires that I build myself up as a person, meaning that I grow, and then it requires me to share this knowledge and facilitate the growth and improvement of others, to the best of my abilities.

It’s an extra challenge to be writing about self-improvement, and for people to take me seriously, if I can’t even make my own self happy. However, being a happy guy, I can fill myself with happy energy and pass it right along to someone that I’m talking to (and maybe even to you through my writing).

This makes happiness a great tool, but not the ultimate goal. Thus, it can be dangerous to constantly seek more and more happiness, especially when the things that make us happy may be causing us to be self-destructive.

Create Happiness in Meaningful Things

If it’s meaningful to you, it will make you happy. If this assumption or theory is in fact true, then it’s very important for us to put meaning into truly positive things. If it makes you happy to compliment someone, improve their life, or to give of yourself in some way, than you’ll always be happy at the benefit of improving the world.

If happiness means making more money, even if it means ruining other people’s livelihoods, then you might be in a zero-sum situation, in which your plus is another persons minus. Here, your goal of happiness isn’t a positive contribution to the world.

If you put meaning into all the wonderful ways in which you can contribute to the world, and make this meaning positive, then you can harness the happiness tool to enable you to achieve your contribution goal.

Further Reading from Rabbi Noach Orlowek

I’ve had class with Rabbi Orlowek, and he’s a genius. I should be having class with him two or three times a week for the next 9 months. From what I’ve seen, I’ll be quoting him often in the near future, so you can find that information here. In the mean time, feel free to order and read one of his books.

• My Discipline, My Child ^[3]
• My Child, My Discipline ^[4]
• Raising Roses Among Thorns ^[5]

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