HEALTH, HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS

    Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.

Buddha

We know that a healthy body is home to a healthy mind, that is, a happy and satisfied mind. Yet a healthy body alone, especially with young people, does not necessarily make one blissful. A person craving success and recognition would neither enjoy nor appreciate anything else. We need success at school, in our career and in love at any price. So, what is this price?

Obsession with success

There is nothing wrong with pursuit of success as such. It can be seen as a sort of perpetual motion driving our civilization. Without successful inventors and researchers humanity would be deprived of such basics as the fire or the wheel, let alone electric power, aircraft or computers. Progress in medical science saves us from extinction as a result of smallpox or plague. Therefore, the desire for success is a virtuous instinct that fosters happiness and even health.

When success becomes an end in itself, the body wants this “drug” even at the price of self-immolation.

Nevertheless, obsession with success as an end in itself may cause problems. Many a parent shower their kids with compliments for little social victories and achievements -- a first step to raise an ambition and vanity addict.  Such a person would happily toil without food or sleep for the sake of the next portion of appreciation and jealousy from others. His or her body becomes addicted to this “drug” and wants it even at the price of self-immolation.

"Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness."

                                     George Orwell

Woe from success

Ultimate misery arrives when the ambition addict finally reaches the long-expected “happiness” of general appreciation and success. At first he is ecstatic to realize that his dreams have finally materialized and time has come to reap the fruit of his labors and hopes. This elation, however, soon gives way to growing anxiety. On the one hand, the person wants a new wave of success and recognition. On the other hand, he fears that his current intoxicating triumph may pass and never return.  

A veritable stress explosion assaults his body. Adrenalin levels surge. The emotional subcortex gets inflamed and visualizes the world in grotesque black and grey. Fear alternates with bouts of aggression and anxiety with periods of deep depression. This pattern is a rule with few exceptions. This is the price that we pay for seeking success and fame instead of peace and spiritual satisfaction.

Millstones of fear and depression

“What a lot of things I don’t need! While other acquire expensive luxuries from the market, I get myself greater pleasures than theirs from my own soul, without expense.”

                                                  Socrates

There is little need to explain the impact of these factors on health. A person caught between the millstones of fear and depression seeks to help his brain by means of various chemical agents such as medicines (particularly antidepressants), alcohol, and narcotics. Metabolism at first manages to burn anything thrown into the furnace of our stomach, even if the new celebrity overindulges in rich foods and alcohol. As depression comes, however, the person gains weight and starts suffering from high blood pressure, arthritis, and osteochondrosis, with the ensuing back and neck pain, headache,e and heart problems. 

The merciless noose is tightening. It would be rather bizarre to think of this suffocating and painful whirlpool as an achievement and an enviable fate.

So, success and happiness viewed through the prism of health turn out be the opposite of each other. It was no secret for wise men across times and cultures. As they say in the East, a sage knows how to be always content.

To find happiness and good health one needs to enjoy his or her work, creative efforts and relationships.

To find happiness and keep good health we need to master a simple art of deriving satisfaction from our work, creative efforts and relationships rather than from external success and recognition by others.  

It is with happiness as with watches: the less complicated, the less easily deranged.                                 

Nicolas de Chamfort 

It is not difficult at all. Just realize how false external success may be and learn to look within, compare yourself to your own self of a week ago, not to a neighbor or a friend.  If over the past week, you succeeded in harnessing your bad habits and attain some spiritual growth, rest assured that these achievements will form a sound foundation for satisfaction, happiness, and therefore a healthy life for years to come.