In my view, the primary reason happiness is on the decline in America and in many market democracies around the world is that we’ve become “achieve-aholics” who, as a result of our achievement-seeking lifestyles, lack sufficient human connection. Lacking connection, we eventually dysfunction. As achieve-aholics move through adulthood, they feel a sense of boredom, emptiness and meaninglessness. Many are mis-diagnosed as having depression when in fact they are just lonely (I wrote about this in an earlier post on the rise of loneliness in America). To feel better, achieve-aholics oftentimes seek illegitimate thrills (e.g. sexual affairs, pornography, extreme sports and extreme business risks) or they self-medicate to numb the pain, which leads to substance abuse. In my opinion, this is why America, with a mere five percent of the world’s population consumes half of the mood-altering pharmacological medications and two-thirds of the world’s illegal drugs (a point that Joseph Califano, head of the National Center on Substance Abuse at Columbia University, made in a video interview on the Atlantic’s website).
The bottom line is that we are human beings, not machines. As I consistently present on this blog, and all the science makes it abundantly clear, we need human connection to thrive. This point is underscored in another fine Atlantic article written by my friend Joshua Wolf Shenk entitled “What Makes Us Happy?.” Josh’s article is about the 70-year long Grant study to understand happiness and flourishing in life by following the lives of 268 men who graduated from Harvard in the late 1930s.
Dr. George Valliant, the psychiatrist at Harvard who heads the Grant study, summed it up this way: “The only thing that really matters in life is your relationships…” As for happiness, Dr. Valliant concludes in the video interview: “happiness is love.” I agree, for the most part, that happiness is relationships and love. I would add meaningful work to the equation and phrase happiness in a slightly different way. In The Connection Culture Manifesto and Fired Up or Burned Out, I present the case that meaningful relationships AND meaningful work are both important to experience joy and contentment, and to flourish over the course of one’s life.
Balance is key. But getting the balance right isn’t easy. It’s a recurring issue in my own life. Recently, a friend of mine who heads leadership training for a prestigious hospital system in New England, asked me try out the Hartman Values Profile as a possible tool to use in my work coaching leaders. It indicated I’m flourishing in most areas of my life but still I work too much and don’t take sufficient care of myself. Now I’m thinking through how I can make changes to keep from drifting to a state of imbalance.
What do you think? I hope you’ll take the time to read the links in this post and share your thoughts in the comments section below. Do you agree with what I’ve said? Are you getting the balance right? Do you have advice you can share here about how to balance work and life outside of work?
