Being Happy Isn’t Always Rainbows & Butterflies

Optimal happiness isn’t always rainbows, butterflies, and blue skies. Sometimes things just don’t go our way, and we have to do things we wouldn’t otherwise don’t want to do.

For example, I don’t necessarily love to clean, drive, or manage a business. In an ideal world, I would delegate these tasks to others and relax on the beach, enjoying the sun and drinking natural juice. However, despite not wanting to do these tasks, I often end up doing them because I have to do them or because I am the best person for the job.

When it comes to cleaning, I have asked my flatmates or family to help me clean the house and found it still unacceptably dirty. So, I had a choice:

– I could ask them to do a better job;
– I could get angry with them;
– I could live in a dirty house; or
– I could clean it myself.

I would still ask them to do a better job, explaining and showing them how to do it properly. But when it is still not done up to my standards, I feel the need to do it myself. Certain things are simply unacceptable to me, so if necessary, I will bring a task up to the level that I want.

When it comes to driving, I can fall asleep with certain people behind the wheel, trusting them to get us from point A to B without concern. However, with others, I prefer to take the wheel myself because I prefer to be alive and arrive at my destination in one piece.

Lastly, managing a business can be a complex task with many moving parts. Despite my love for what I do, I can’t say that I enjoy every aspect of it equally. There are tasks I would rather delegate and forget about, but I can’t do that because I’ve tried it before and it didn’t work as well as I wanted. So, I end up doing these tasks myself.

In business and in life, certain tasks just need to be done. Sometimes, I am the best person for the job, and sometimes I’m not, and I am aware of that. I don’t have an idealistic or egotistic obsession with grandeur, so if I can’t do something, I’m capable of giving tasks to professionals.

However, there are plenty of situations where, despite not wanting to do something, I force myself to do it because I am the best person available at that moment. I don’t have infinite funds to hire an expert for every little task that needs to be done, and sometimes, I have to accept that some tasks will never be completed to my liking. But while I can’t do it all myself, I still give them to someone else. It’s better for someone else to do these tasks than no one at all, as my time is better spent doing something more important and meaningful.

I ask myself: Can I live with a task being half done? If the answer is yes, then there is no problem, and I can delegate it to someone else. If the answer is no, then I either have to find someone else to do it (which isn’t always possible) or do it myself.

In this way, being happy requires me to do things I ideally wouldn’t want to do. The journey may not always be pleasant, but it is still worth it for the destination, so I still go on that journey. And since I’m there, I might as well force myself to enjoy it. It is my life, and if I skip all the moments I don’t want to experience, I would be looking forward to only 5-10% of my time, bitter for the rest of the time, which is not a good way to live life.

This reminds me of the movie Click (2006), where the protagonist was able to skip all the unpleasant moments, only to realize that he had skipped his whole life and now had many deathbed regrets:

This isn’t to say that we need to embrace toxic positivity being so delusional about good vibes and happiness that we can’t see or handle anything negative.

No! Happiness often comes in many shades, some of which are not as warm and bright as others. But despite it all, we need to remember that happiness is both a journey AND a destination. So even when things aren’t going our way, when the world isn’t full of rainbows and butterflies, and when we have to get our hands dirty, we can still choose to be happy. We can realize that it is all part of the journey, so we might as well make the most of it because we only live once.

Lastly, since we only live once, we might as well make our life the most wonderful adventure possible by learning to optimize our life for happiness. After all, if what we are doing is leading to positive and happy outcomes, then it is the correct thing to do, while negativity and unhappiness mean that we are doing something wrong (or not doing something right). In this way, in Optimal Happiness, we train people to reach their happiest potential, so if you are interested in learning to optimize your life and become your happiest self, then you are in the right place. Speak to us today, and together we will build a happier tomorrow!