4 Hendricks, Gay. The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level. 2010.
HarperOne.
11
the HAPPINESS
of EXCELLENCE
Eric Greitens says that there are three primary forms of happiness: the happiness of pleasure, the happiness of grace, and the happiness of excellence5. He compares them to the primary colors, the basis on which the entire spectrum is created.
The happiness of pleasure is largely sensory. It’s a good meal when you’re hungry, the smell of air after it rains, waking up warm and cozy in your bed.
The happiness of grace is gratitude. It’s looking over to see the love of your life sleeping next to you and whispering, “thank you.” It’s taking inventory of what you do have. It’s when you speak to something greater than yourself, expressing humility and awe.
And then there is the happiness of excellence. The kind of happiness that comes from the pursuit of something great. Not the moment you arrive at the top of the mountain and raise your fists in victory, but the process of falling in love with the hike. It is meaningful work. It is flow. It is the purpose that sears identity and builds character and channels our energy toward something greater than the insatiable, daily pursuit of our fleeting desires.
Just as removing one of the primary colors would make many others impossible (without yellow, you could not have any shade of green) without any one of these happinesses, it is almost impossible to thrive.
One cannot replace another. They are all necessary. But we try anyway.
To drink in excess, for example—the happiness of pleasure—is common when the happiness of excellence isn’t being pursued. But it is not, and will never be, the solution.
“Lots and lots of red will never make blue. Pleasures will never make you whole.”
The happiness of excellence is the work of emotional resilience. It’s the highest ranking on Maslow’s hierarchy. It is measured, deliberate, and consistent. It is often avoided because the discomfort is palpable, and the reward isn’t instantaneous. There’s no contact high during the first days of marathon training when your lungs are stinting and you want to vomit. But
over time, you develop your skill. You begin to imagine what you could accomplish. You fall in love with the process.
Though all three of the happinesses are different, they are all shaped by context. Someone who has gone without food for three days is more attuned to the happiness of pleasure than people who consider meals and shelter givens.
Likewise, those who have never acquainted themselves with the power and pleasure of working toward something fueled not by the sparks of passion but with the embers of sober, consistent resolve, do not know that on the other side of exerted effort, there is profound reward.
Many of us are colorblind to the joys and complexities of our lives, and it is because we are missing a part of the foundation. We want to be authors but have no desire to develop the discipline it takes to sit down and write for four hours a day for years on end. We want to be legends and geniuses and masters, but care little to develop the discipline it would require to log our 10,000 hours—so to say.
Happiness is not only how we can astound our senses, but also the peace of mind that comes from knowing we are becoming who we want and need to be. That’s what we receive from pursuing the happiness of excellence: not accomplishment, but identity. A sense of self that we carry into everything else in our lives. A technicolor pigment that makes the entire spectrum come alive.
5 Greitens, Eric. Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom For Living a Better Life. 2016. Mariner Books.
12
the KNOWING-DOING GAP:
why we AVOID DOING
WHAT’S BEST FOR US,
and how to
CONQUER
RESISTANCE
FOR GOOD
The ancient Greeks called it Akrasia, the Zen Buddhists call it resistance, you and I call it procrastination, every productivity guru on the Internet calls it being “stuck.” Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton call it the
“knowing-doing gap,” or the experience of knowing the best thing to do, but doing something else anyway6.
Common sense tells us that if we put another hour into novel writing each night, ate better, woke earlier, chose affirmative thoughts, spoke honestly and connected more genuinely, we’d live better lives. But the real question, and the real work, is not understanding what’s good for us, but why we choose otherwise. Understanding the fabric of resistance is the only way we can unstitch it.
There are many reasons we self-sabotage, and most of them have something to do with comfort. Modern society (innovation, culture, wealth, success) is designed to convince us that a “good life” is one that is most comfortable, or able to provide us with a sense of being pain-free and secure. This is pretty directly related to the fact that human beings are hardwired to seek comfort, which translates to us as survival—we’re physiologically designed that way. It only makes sense that in our more fully actualized intellectual and emotional lives, we’d want the same.
Moving yourself past resistance is a matter of shifting your perception of comfort. It’s about considering the alternative. It’s altering your mindset to focus on the discomfort you will face if you don’t do the thing in front of you, as opposed to the discomfort you will face if you do.
If left unchecked, the knowing-doing gap will leave you a shell of the person you intended to be. It will wreck your most intimate, passionate relationships, keep you from the kind of daily productivity required to achieve any goal worth working toward. It will keep you in a manic state of indecision (do I, or don’t I? Which feeling do I let guide me?). You have to take control for yourself, and you can do so by considering the big picture.
The alternative. The way your life will be if you don’t do this thing.
How will you quantifiably measure this year? What will you have done?
How many hours will you have wasted? If you had to live today—or any average day—on repeat for the rest of your life, where would you end up?
What would you accomplish? How happy would you be? What relationships will you have fostered? Will you be looking back knowing you likely damn well missed out on what could have been the love of your life because you weren’t “ready?” What about the hours you could have been playing music or writing or painting or whatever-ing? Where will those have gone?
You will never be ready for the things that matter, and waiting to feel ready before you start acting is how the knowing-doing gap widens. It’s uncomfortable to work, to stretch the capacity of your tolerance, to be vulnerable with someone you care deeply about, but it is never more comfortable than going your whole life without the things you really want.
Anxiety builds in our idle hours. Fear and resistance thrive when we’re avoiding the work. Most things aren’t as hard or as trying as we chalk them up to be. They’re ultimately fun and rewarding and expressions of who we really are. That’s why we want them. Taking small steps will remind you that this is true. It will soothe you in a way that just thinking about taking action never will. It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking rather than think your way into a new way of acting, so do one little thing today and let the momentum build.
