So now, I make every effort to avoid stress. I have the temper of a monk compared to before (what's road rage?), I read anything at my own leisurely pace, I plan dinners with friends one week apart, and no longer take classes even for leisure. I may sound overcautious, but tiptoeing to avoid stress is truly the lesser evil.
But being forced to change my ways always makes me reevaluate the relative merits of working your tail off vs. working hard but not overly so. A lot of it has to do with being Asian, specifically being raised in an Asian family, living in an Asian community, and having mostly Asian friends. Any respectable Asian kid is pressured and molded into a go-getter, for better or worst. Of course, our generation is more often branching out into the non-traditionally-Asian academic subjects & careers, but the motivations haven't changed much from our predecessors. Whether it's banking, medicine, law, risking it all to go entrepreneur, or even sacrificing some bank to go non-profit, Asians put tons of pressure on themselves to skyrocket to the holy grail of a career and don't have a margin for a moment of laziness. We're rarely satisfied with the status quo, even if the status quo can bring a very high quality of life. We're always working toward something bigger, better, more illustrious.
What does this have to with happiness? Well, many might expect that upon getting to where they've worked toward all your life, the flood gates open to a deluge of happiness. But Ed Diener, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, says " What happiness isn't is getting everything right in your life." It's a frame of mind that lies in the way we live and look at the world. A friend of mine said happiness is an extreme and fleeting, so why work toward it? Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at UC Riverside, analyzed studies on identical twins and other research and concluded that happiness is 50% genetic, 40% intentional and 10% circumstantial. If 50% is out of our hands, and the rest favors self-determination instead of circumstance, maybe happiness is more concrete than it once seemed and we should be working at it just like we do everything else if we hope to attain it in our lifetimes. Unless you're Exxon Mobil, don't expect any windfalls.
But being forced to change my ways always makes me reevaluate the relative merits of working your tail off vs. working hard but not overly so. A lot of it has to do with being Asian, specifically being raised in an Asian family, living in an Asian community, and having mostly Asian friends. Any respectable Asian kid is pressured and molded into a go-getter, for better or worst. Of course, our generation is more often branching out into the non-traditionally-Asian academic subjects & careers, but the motivations haven't changed much from our predecessors. Whether it's banking, medicine, law, risking it all to go entrepreneur, or even sacrificing some bank to go non-profit, Asians put tons of pressure on themselves to skyrocket to the holy grail of a career and don't have a margin for a moment of laziness. We're rarely satisfied with the status quo, even if the status quo can bring a very high quality of life. We're always working toward something bigger, better, more illustrious.
What does this have to with happiness? Well, many might expect that upon getting to where they've worked toward all your life, the flood gates open to a deluge of happiness. But Ed Diener, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, says " What happiness isn't is getting everything right in your life." It's a frame of mind that lies in the way we live and look at the world. A friend of mine said happiness is an extreme and fleeting, so why work toward it? Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at UC Riverside, analyzed studies on identical twins and other research and concluded that happiness is 50% genetic, 40% intentional and 10% circumstantial. If 50% is out of our hands, and the rest favors self-determination instead of circumstance, maybe happiness is more concrete than it once seemed and we should be working at it just like we do everything else if we hope to attain it in our lifetimes. Unless you're Exxon Mobil, don't expect any windfalls.