Example of How Optimal Happiness Helped Steve

​​People often ask me how Optimal Happiness can help different people to reach their happiest potential and if I have some examples of clients I worked with in the past for whom this model worked. Today, I would like to talk about one of such cases related to a man (let’s call him Steve) who was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia, a man in front of mirror

The back story is that Steve grew up with his mother who is also schizophrenic. Now, science today believes that schizophrenia is not hereditary, meaning that it is not passed down through genes, but rather it can be taught by a parent who also suffers from this condition. 

As such, his mothers’ insecurities about the world were taught to Steve and now Steve has to do something about them. Respectfully, we can’t know what exactly will trigger Steve unless we talk to him, observe his reactions, and address these triggers. This is the traditional psychology approach. 

My approach would consist of understanding these triggers, too, but I would label the whole psychological trauma as part of the Emotional Intelligence Pillar of Happiness, meaning that there are five more pillars to address. As such, we can’t look at individuals only through one dimension and we need to address the whole system. We need to look at the lives of people through all Six Pillars of Happiness (as described in my book Optimal Happiness: The Fastest & Surest Way to Reach Your Happiest Potential).

Respectfully, the origin of conditions such as schizophrenia often starts with people who live suboptimal lives in terms of the six pillars, which is why the cure is often found also in making people complete individuals. By addressing all Six Pillars of Happiness, people have no other path than to be happy. This is guaranteed. 

In Steve’s case, this system worked about as effectively as we can expect. Generally speaking, Steve addressed all the biggest problems and now he is just optimizing his system.

Roman Russo

Roman Russo

Roman Russo is the visionary founder, senior happiness coach, and Chief Happiness Officer of Optimal Happiness. He has written the revolutionary Optimal Happiness: The Fastest and Surest Way to Reach Your Happiest Potential, a must-read book about achieving our happiest potential. After researching this field for over eight years, Roman is confident that anyone can become happy and invites us to undertake this transformation. Are you ready to start living the life you always meant to live?

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“The problem is that of optimization,” states Roman Russo, author of Optimal Happiness: The Fastest & Surest Way To Reach Your Happiest Potential. Most people will tell you how to be less unhappy or more happy, but no one is speaking about how to be the happiest we can be. And this is the difference that makes all the difference. By not looking at our happiest potential, we fall short of achieving it. After all, we all have hundreds of ideas on how to be happier or less sad, but most people still feel like they are not living their best lives. As such, Optimal Happiness explores the question of how to be the happiest we can be, regardless of who we are, where we are from, and what our life circumstances are. It proposes a complete formula for happiness and explains how to optimize the formula so we can be happy today and forever, breaking down what it really takes to become one of the happiest people alive (spoiler: it isn’t what most people think it is).

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