Inner Peace, Purpose, Enjoyment, and Circumstances

What is success? When people hear that question, their mind immediately gravitates towards the messages they’ve been inundated with since early childhood:

Success is earning good grades. It’s attending elite universities. It’s receiving a high income. It’s having a high net worth. It’s winning. It’s notoriety. It’s moving up the corporate ladder.

But what if we reframe the question to this: what is a successful life?

Then the question becomes much deeper and less shallow. It becomes less egocentric. With the reframing, we think about happiness and what it means to have a well-lived life.

If you were to ask strangers on the street what they want out of life, the most frequent response would likely be “to be happy”. The 14^th Dalai Lama said the purpose of life is happiness. While that makes sense intuitively, as will be explained later, that is not entirely true for everyone. Secondly, happiness is vague with multiple meanings and interpretations.

Suppose you were to ask a follow up question: “You say happiness is the most important thing you want out of life. So how do you plan on being happy?”

You would see their body language change and their brain scrambling to search its vast database for an answer. The answers will not likely be satisfactory.

Many people wander the earth searching for happiness in life, but they cannot explain what happiness is, how to get it, or how to keep it. If you cannot define what you want, how are you going to find it or know when you’ve found it?

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Happiness is not an easy definition. Evidence of that comes from the plethora of authors who write on well-being and happiness. Each has their own definition or no definition at all. In academic research, happiness can be defined in terms of “frequent positive affect, high life satisfaction, and infrequent negative affect.”¹   

Well-being is another difficult definition. A pioneer in the field of positive psychology argues happiness is not the aim of life; well-being is more important. He believes well-being comes from a combination of positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. ² This framework, called PERMA, is interesting, but difficult to follow for practical purposes.

Three major shortcomings from this framework are (1) it underemphasizes inner peace, which is to happiness and well-being, what oxygen is to the human body, (2) it overemphasizes external development, while true happiness and well-being are cultivated from inner development, and (3) emotions are short-term bodily reactions, so chasing positive emotion can result in being an addict for dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphin.  

Moreover, engagement is another way of saying a “state of flow”. But do we really need to be in a frequent state of flow to have well-being and how does a parent, coal miner, cashier, or construction worker achieve that? What types of things do we need to accomplish in our lives to have well-being?

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Another happiness researcher said happiness is a byproduct of the pleasure-purpose principle.³ Pleasure is sometimes described as having a good time and purpose has been described as having a good life.

The researcher believes that happiness is experiences of pleasure and purpose over time, and that happiness is caused by what we pay attention to, and how we feel as a result of that attention. For example, you might only feel great life satisfaction when you think about how satisfied you are in life.

There is no specific dosage of purpose and pleasure that should be prescribed for everyone. Each person is different. We need to find the right balance for ourselves.

Saint Teresa of Calcutta, like most saints, valued purpose much more than pleasure. Saints often feel sacrificing pleasure is a virtue and that it increases their life satisfaction, meaning, and sense of purpose. Eleven of the twelve apostles of Jesus were martyred, and they knew the risk, but it was for the greatest purpose.

It is also possible to get enjoyment from things that are unpleasurable in the moment. For example, long-distance runners put their body through extreme stress and pain, and no one is forcing them to do it, they do it because they enjoy the challenge. Of course, it is possible to get misery from things that are pleasurable in the moment, such as adultery, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, crime, etc.

To give an example of balance being needed between purpose and pleasure, consider children. We wouldn’t want our children to abstain from going to school so they can play all day and “be happy”. Instead, we want our children to attend school so that they develop the tools to have a good life. We care about their long-term well-being and happiness. We also don’t want our children to attend school 7 days a week for 10 hours a day, to the point they are constantly under stress and burned out; we want them to be able to play and have fun in childhood. Well-being and happiness require harmony between purpose and pleasure for children and most adults.

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Pursuing happiness can set unrealistic expectations if people ask themselves, “How can I feel strong positive emotions all the time, avoid ever feeling negative emotions, and feel a strong sense of life satisfaction all the time?” Life circumstances matter as well. If your boss is an unhappy and cruel person, and your co-workers are negative all the time, your work life is unlikely to be filled with positive emotions. If you discover your spouse has been cheating, you are likely going to be filled with strong negative emotions. If your spouse gets diagnosed with terminal cancer and you have young children at home, it’s going to be very difficult to be filled with positive emotions and a great sense of life satisfaction.  

Despite circumstances, we have the power to change the way we feel. When a loved one passes away, grief is an appropriate response. Grief is not weakness; it is the price you pay for love. However, you must grieve in healthy ways and eventually move past the feelings of perpetual grief. External circumstances matter, but we have the power to change how we feel internally when we are ready.

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We all agree that there is a difference between temporary negative moods and chronic depression. In my framework for happiness, I distinguish between fleeting happiness and chronic happiness. Fleeting happiness are those momentary feelings we get from pleasure and purpose. If you have a great wine, meal, sex, or your sports team wins the championship, those are good feelings. They come from dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphin. However, the activity will end soon and so will the delight from it. If you accomplish a goal, have a wedding, or purchase a new dream house, those feelings of euphoria will last longer, but they don’t last forever. Similarly, if you help a friend or stranger in need by loaning them money, it might give you a feeling of purpose or meaning, but it won’t last long.

Chronic happinessis different; it is a state of well-being and it comes from inner peace. If you recall the popular academic definition of happiness, one of the components was “infrequent negative affect”. You lessen the frequency of negative moods by learning how to develop the state of inner peace. Inner peace comes from altruistic love, compassion, and positive feelings. It requires a strong belief system, including the belief that inner peace is important to cultivate. The opposite of inner peace is negativity, pessimism, anger, anxiety, depression, inner turmoil, and despair.

Catholic, Buddhist, and Hindu monks will detach themselves from many worldly desires, such as marriage and possessions, to be at greater peace. They can live in poverty and be at peace because they are not trying to please a spouse and support a family. As we will see later, understanding desire is an important component of inner peace and happiness.

Inner peace comes from the heart.

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Chronic happiness is more than a fleeting mood, it is a state of being—and certain conditions in life are more favorable than others for not only avoiding unhappiness, but for finding inner peace, purpose, and enjoyment.

Life is not fair and good fortune is not distributed equally. Someone who experiences tragedy after tragedy in life is going to have a much more difficult time feeling happiness and well-being than someone who experiences very fortunate circumstances. Theoretically it is possible to achieve happiness in Auschwitz, but in practice it is very difficult. Some circumstances are so difficult—such as slavery, sex trafficking, wrongful imprisonment—that only the most remarkable of men and women can achieve happiness and well-being under those conditions.

Prison will induce more negative moods and less opportunities for enjoyment and purpose than a daily environment outside of prison, not just because of the lack of freedom, but because of the people that surround you. Being free and surrounded by happy, kind, loving, humorous, fun, and optimistic people is an environment that happiness and well-being thrives in.

“I learned from experience that joy does not reside in the things about us, but in the very depths of the soul, that one can have it in the gloom of a dungeon as well as in the palace of a king.”

–St Terese of Lisieux

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Chronic happiness is a framework and a state of being that incorporates inner peace, purpose, enjoyment, and circumstances.

Now that we have a satisfactory framework for chronic happiness, the next question becomes how to attain inner peace, purpose, enjoyment, and more favorable circumstances?

Next post we will address some common “Habits of Unhappiness”.

1. Pursuing Happiness: The Architecture of Sustainable Change by Sonja Lyubomirsky, Kennon M. Sheldon, David Schkade. Published in Review of General Psychology 2005, Vol 9, No. 2, 111-131.
2. Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being by Martin Seligman
3. Happiness by Design by Paul Dolan