How happy people get the balance right

via Forbes by Paloma Cantero-Gomez

Since the moment we stop confusing happiness with getting what we want or merely reaching our goals, we start heading down the right path. Greeks already got it right when defining happiness as “the joy that we feel when we’re striving after our potential.” Indeed, and despite the hedonistic streams of thought widely rooted in the current culture, happiness has a lot to be with doing what is right and learning to love it. Immediate pleasure and rewards that do not help us to unleash our best personal version are quite far from falling into the happiness concept. For an action to bring us happiness, it has to be right per sei, and it has to help us to fully exercise our personal freedom for achieving excellence.

Happiness is achieved through a favorable combination of the destination and the journey. Happiness is achieved through a favorable combination of the destination and the journey. Without the right destination, there is no way to walk a happy path. But without a happy path, negativity can diminish the value of the destination and pose a significant block to walking towards it. Happiness thus is not just about reaching or achieving even though when the aim is right.  It can not be only focused on the peak of the mountain but nurtured itself along the climbing process.

Happiness, after all, is an inner choice. Intelligent beings have the ability to choose what is right and make them better despite the ultimate challenges that need to be overcome. As intelligent beings inclined to what is good, humans all pursue happiness even when they are not aware of it. Happiness seems desirable and so easy on paper. But reality sometimes is quite more complicated, and the fast-moving track defining modern culture tend to actually make things a little bit more complicated. Speed and development are good but come also associated with an incredible amount of choices and opportunities for growth that may appear overwhelming.

Part of choosing the right means to keep the right balance. Setting the proper ground for identifying and pursuing with joy what makes us better requires high standards of both internal and external balance. In the satisfaction-model proposed by Stephen Gribben in his book Key Coaching Models, the healthy perspective of getting the equilibrium between confidence and challenge is what enables people to make the adjustments required to find the balance to happiness.

Confidence is the first element of this model measuring the individual believe in our own value, strengths and core beliefs. Meanwhile, Challengerepresents the satisfaction, meaning, and sense of achievement experienced from what we are doing. Satisfaction comes from the ability to get the right balance between our own level of confidence and challenge. By pushing too much into the challenge direction, we risk developing stressful behaviors that may blur both the path and the destination. Contrary, by standing too much in the Confidence line we risk stopping unleashing our full potential what will prevent us from continuing walking the way.

So how to get this balance to happiness right?

There are four necessary steps required to create a meaningful and sustainable equilibrium that drives you for better…

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