Arthur C. Brooks’ book “Gross National Happiness” was mentioned a few days ago on World On the Web. What I found interesting was the statement that his research shows there are three basic things that make people happy: meaning in their lives, control over their environment, and success in creating value in the world.
How does one achieve these things? Certainly not with money, nor with power or fame. No, they are to be found through a serious pursuit of personal values—in your life, your family, and your community.
I think this also means there is a great challenge when one of these three things goes out of whack. For instance, suppose you lose control of an important part of your environment. No matter what you do, how hard you work, or who you appeal to, the situation is out of your control. That’s a huge producer of stress in your life.
When such an out of control situation occurs in a group, the team, whose every effort at achieving their goal is blocked, tends to go dysfunctional. As happiness goes away, patience wears thin and the team can begin to self-destruct. With loss of control comes the danger of placing blame and assigning poor performance to those (often team members) who may not deserve it. And that’s a shame because the bad situation just gets worse as meaning in life and success in creating value in the world go out of whack too.
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