What is your definition of happiness and when are you truly happy? Isn't it more the satisfaction you're looking for?
I grew up in a society where it is considered important to have a career, own a home, start a family and have at least one car or at least one e-bike for every person in the household. You strive to have a greener garden than your neighbours, and once that goal is achieved, you look for the next area where you can compare yourself to others.
I am writing this text for people who lead a similar life, or have a life where all basic needs are met and no comforts are lacking, and yet they are wholly or partially unhappy, or feel an inner emptiness, or are dissatisfied. Rarely do I meet someone who is truly happy all round. There is always something to complain about. It could be your job, your family situation, the way you deal with clients or your own team, your personal life or a holiday that didn’t go as hoped. We often long for past moments or dream of a possible future. For me personally, it is important to bring more satisfaction to those around me.
At one point in my life, I suddenly realised: ‘I live from weekend to weekend. People live from holiday to holiday. They’ve just come from the Seychelles, are forced to give in to their everyday lives and focus their thoughts on the next trip.’ Do you know that too?
„The meaning of our human existence is fulfilled in the here and now, in this moment!“
Fernand Braun
- On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied are you? (I invite you to write this number down and put it on your mirror. Look at it every morning. Is there anything you would like to change?)
But when does a person really feel inner harmony and do we really strive for happiness?
According to the teachings of Patanjali, an ancient Indian scholar who is said to have lived between 200 BC and 400 AD, ‘santosha’ (contentment) means an attitude of humility and frugality. By cultivating contentment and minimising one’s desires, it is said, one can achieve overwhelming happiness.
The World Happiness Report looks at the following factors each year: “Income, health, having someone to rely on, having a sense of freedom to make important life choices, generosity and the absence of corruption all play an important role in supporting life assessments”.
- According to the World Happiness Report 2023: ‘A population will only experience high levels of overall life satisfaction if its people are also prosocial, healthy and prosperous. In other words, people must have a high level of what Aristotle called ‘eudaimonia’.
- The topic of well-being has long since ceased to be ‘only’ dealt with by philosophy. It has also been ‘addressed’ in other areas such as neuroscience (Davidson, 2004) and the theory of human needs (Ryan and Deci, 2001). (European Social Survey)
I personally believe that it is always important to find a balance in everything because we all have our own individual realities. We are no longer living in 200 BC and have to find our way in 2024. On the other hand, there are also centuries of experience in ancient wisdom, so for SuSaFlow I have combined two traditional coaching methods (the ‘Five Pillars of Identity’ and the ‘Three Worlds Model’) with the elements of well-being from the Greek philosopher Aristotle. This results in four areas of life (similar to the categories of the World Happiness Report), which serve as the basis for self-reflection in SuSaFlow’s holistic coaching workshops.
How do you become happy or even more, how do you achieve contentment?
Towards Peace” – what happiness means is probably different for everyone. According to the Dalai Lama, we are all united on a spiritual level by the controversial goal of ‘avoiding suffering and finding happiness’. The question is: How can I achieve this? Twin studies have shown that around 30-40% of the differences in happiness between people are genetic. The good news is that the brain can be thought of as a muscle and, thanks to modern technology such as fMRI, we know that we have the ability to train specific areas of the brain. For example, research into the science of gratitude shows that there is such a thing as a personal baseline of happiness that can be increased by up to 25%.
Another way to pursue happiness is to reflect on and personally develop your behaviour, thoughts and habits. If, for example, during self-reflection you realise that your inner and outer selves do not match, i.e. that a person may act differently than he or she pretends or perceives internally, in systemic coaching we call this ‘incongruence’. In my opinion, the following thoughts from Osho fit this topic and form a wonderful bridge to the coaching principle mentioned above: “Acting goes in a different direction than our thinking – and the feeling is different again. We feel more and more fragmented and falling apart. We suffer because we lose our integrity, we lose our wholeness. SuSaFlow workshops guide you to become aware of such ‘incongruent’ parts of yourself and accompany you on your path to cultivating ‘happiness and well-being’, i.e. contentment.
And finally, a scientific addition from Gerad Hüther’s book ‘Operating Instructions for the Human Brain’: ‘Whenever our inner world becomes disordered, the brain triggers responses and reactions that are suitable for restoring our inner order. He also explains that, unlike animals, we are very good at evaluating these perceptions thanks to our special neural circuits in the brain. Through the neocortex in our brain, we can make ourselves aware of things and influence them at will. In this way, we can bring perceptions that we have long suppressed back into consciousness by sharpening our senses and re-evaluating them.
