The Pursuit of Happiness

The theory of positive psychology has two foundational parts. The first is that people really do desire to have deep and meaningful happiness based on positive goals, events and actions. The second is focusing your mind, body and action on positive character strengths. I talked a little about this yesterday with the “tell yourself how good you really are” and will touch more on this later this week.
Today I want to talk about the Pursuit of Happiness. I will not spell it Happyness as the movie with Will Smith did, but the message in that movie is a nice connection to this post. The Pursuit of Happiness; what does that mean? We all have the right to pursue happiness, but how many of us actually achieve this in our lives? A more interesting question is how many of us actually set a goal for ourselves of being happy?

If you remember in the fact based movie “The Pursuit of Happyness” Chris Gardner was a single Dad with no job, no income, and no hope. One day he was offered a non-paying position at a brokerage firm. He worked hard every day and did the best he could to not only care for his son, but to show him how to persevere in even the hardest of times. This movie is one of my all time favorites because this guy never gives up and always goes back to his values and beliefs. His pursuit of happiness comes not from a dream of being happy, but by every day, even when the day was the worst ever, telling himself that he could do it and he would make it and he was good at what he did.

The pursuit or goal of happiness is not some pie in the sky feeling; rather it is an action of taking what you have, what you believe, and what you dream of being and putting measurable steps behind the goal. It is telling yourself every morning and evening that no matter what, you are going to keep to your goal of being happy. It is grounding your future in your values. It is finding the strengths you have and growing them. Remember, it is a pursuit not a given. Remind yourself what pursuit means. It is to obtain, practice, be driven to and achieve your goal. It is real and it is obtainable.

Do you live with a pursuit of happiness? It is the first foundation of positive psychology. It is one of the first steps in goal setting. It can be the first action that solidifies your value. The Pursuit of Happiness, do you have it and how are you doing to achieve it?