The Happiness Paradox the Happiness Paradigm

The Very Things We Thought Would Bring Us Joy Actually Steal It Away

Richard Eyre

• Publisher: Familius
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781641700535
• eBook ISBN: 9781641701044
• Topic: Desarrollo personal
• Subtopic: Éxito personal

New York Times–Bestselling Author: "The message resonates in today's workaholic culture that rewards hard work and stress with . . . more hard work and stress." — Deseret News
In this book, the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Teaching Your Children Values and The Entitlement Trap, Richard Eyre, contends that the three things today's society desires most—control, ownership, and independence—are, paradoxically, what bring the most discouragement and unhappiness in our lives.
Providing a mind-changing exploration of the inherent problems with our fixation on material possessions, control over our lives, and independence from others, Eyre responds with a unique and engaging counterpoint on how to switch to the joy-giving alternatives of serendipity, stewardship, and interdependence and thus live a more verdant and abundant life. The first half, The Happiness Paradox, explores today's challenges to happiness. The second half explores  The Happiness Paradigm: How A New View Can Turn Your Life Right-Side Up—and walks us through a mental paradigm shift that can change our lives and our search for lasting joy.

CHAPTER 1

THE THREE DECEIVERS

The frustration, stress, and imbalance we so often feel are not based as much on what we do or what happens to us as they are on the fact that we are seeking the wrong things—that we have the wrong goals. That is a bold statement, and most people are quite determined to defend the things they are seeking and the goals they have chosen to pursue. Nevertheless, it is a fact that most of us spend a substantial amount of time and mental effort going after three things that actually end up working against us and against our joy and well-being. They are goals that we have been programmed to think are good things, right things, and things that will bring us happiness. Yet it is our entanglement with these three pur-suits—of control, ownership, and independence—that destroys the balance and the quality of our lives.

THE THREE JOY THIEVES: CONTROL, OWNERSHIP, AND INDEPENDENCE

Before we expand the case for why these are counterproductive goals, ponder for a moment how very, very much we desire each of them and how much effort we put into their pursuit.

Oh, how we long for control. We try to control the events of our day by making lists and checking them off. We try to control our children by disciplining and rewarding them. We try to control our destiny by deciding who and where and what we will become. And when things go in a different direction than our plans and our lists and our goals, we feel frustration and stress.

We not only want and wish for control, ownership, and independence, we essentially worship these concepts or characteristics. They are our idols. They are the gauges by which we measure success.

Ownership is the American way and the measuring stick of the whole Western world! Life seems to present itself as a giant scoreboard where our success is gauged by what we own. We work longer and harder than any other people in the history of the world because we want more wealth, more possessions—more ownership. And when we compare what we own to what others own (a kind of comparing we seem to find irresistible), the outcome is either envy and jealousy or pride and condescension—both of which lead to unhappiness.

Independence is such a revered concept that over three-quarters of the nations around the world have celebrations surrounding their independence. From America to Azerbaijan, we esteem independence and adopt the goal personally as well as societally. To need no one, to stand alone, these are the mottos of today. Yet life continually reminds us of how interdependent and dependent we are, and how much we need other people in our lives. We struggle for autonomy, and it can make us feel lonely and isolated.

We not only want and wish for control, ownership, and independence, we essentially worship these concepts or characteristics. They are our idols. They are the gauges by which we measure success. They are what our podcasts and our social media and our casual conversations are about. They are the assumed and accepted objectives that cause us to change careers or to get a second job or to move to a new place. They motivate us to avoid having more children, to go further into debt, and to buy better planners and apps and time-management tools. They prompt us to try to manipulate the people and things around us, to accumulate more, and to get through things on our own rather than ask for help.

QUESTIONING THE THREE THIEVES

These thieves not only take joy from us but also deceive us. They are called herein the three deceivers because we’ve been tricked into assuming we want them, into assuming they are good for us. They have grown into obsessions. They are called the three joy thieves because that is exactly what they do.

There are two big problems with the concepts of control, ownership, and independence. One is that they cause stress, frustration, and unhappiness. The other is that they represent false values and are, in fact, false and impossible concepts. They are actually illusions. They don’t really exist.

Think about it: What do you really control? You are one tiny individual in a world full of forces and circumstances that operate completely apart from your will. What do you really own? With the one possible exception of your agency or power of choice, you own nothing. You are a user of things that pass through your hands. Finally, from what are you really independent? You are interdependent with so many other people, especially those you love, and completely dependent on God, Nature, or whatever higher power you perceive for the very air you breathe and the light that lets you live.

Think about the folly of trying to control everything. Life is essentially unpredictable. It happens; little of it is within our control. The measure of our success and happiness lies not in manipulating what happens, but in how we handle and respond to what happens. Constantly trying to control what can’t be controlled is a recipe for irritation and stress. Picture yourself at the end of a day when things didn’t happen just like you had planned them (pretty much every day) and ask yourself if you enjoyed the surprises or resented them, because that response is really the only thing you can control.

Ponder the fallacy of our obsession with ownership. What do we really own? We may obtain deeds and titles and bank accounts, but they pass through us as we pass through life—so does anything really belong to us? And doesn’t the illusion of ownership cause jealousy and envy and condescension and lots of other emotions that connect to unhappiness? Look at the ways jealousy divides people throughout the world. Picture yourself running around trying to take care of all your things and wishing you had more of them. And then notice children playing and enjoying all the things they don’t own. All the best things in life are free, and we can’t own any of them.

The bottom line is that we can never have much real control, ownership, or independence.

Consider our misplaced desire for independence. We are all interconnected and interdependent in so many ways. We need each other, and it is these needs that make us human, allow us to love, and encourage us to make commitments. Too much emphasis on independence leads to isolation. Picture yourself today and think about how almost everything you have done is dependent on utilities or electricity or machines, or interdependent with people at work or in schools or stores or anywhere in the complex flow of your life. We are anything but independent.

The bottom line is that we can never have much real control, ownership, or independence. And we wouldn’t want it even if we could. Too much control would take the adventure and spontaneity out of life. Too much ownership becomes bondage. And too much independence equals loneliness and isolation.

Regardless of our differing spiritual beliefs, when we really stop to think about it, most of us can see the limits and the falsehoods in the ideas of control, ownership, and independence. As believers in a spiritual reality, as partakers of the insights and truths that come with faith (and polls tell us that 90 percent of Americans believe in some spiritual force²), we know, and should be so grateful, that control and ownership lie with a power much greater than ourselves. We are completely dependent on the higher laws of a higher power.

The first time I remember consciously questioning what I was pursuing (and, believe me, I was in HOT pursuit of the three deceivers) was toward the end of undergraduate college. I had just lost the election for student body president, and my girlfriend had broken off our relationship because, as she said, I was “just too self-centered and too obsessed with all [my] big-time goals.”

I was dejected on one level, but I remember that the kind of discouraged, humble feeling I was experiencing somehow felt good to me: mellow and deep. Losing that election and that girl seemed to take the pressure off of me and put me in a quieter place where I felt more in touch with my inner self. I remember thinking, for the first time, that maybe there was a better, less aggressive way to approach life and to view what was happening. I had no idea what that better way was, but it was the opening of a little door that made me begin to wonder if the control, ownership, and independence I was so frantically seeking were really what I wanted.

SOME CONCESSIONS

Now, let’s back off a bit and make some caveats and concessions before this starts sounding a little extreme. Control, ownership, and independence are very useful economic concepts and are also at least partially true and useful psychologically. It’s good to control our checkbooks and our emotions. Ownership and property rights are essential in a democracy and a free economy, and trying to live with relative independence in an economic sense is certainly a virtue.

Also—and we will go deeper on this one in future chapters—control, ownership, and independence can be correctly thought of as a stage in life—a phase that most people have to live through before they can find a higher and more spiritual paradigm in which to exist. Thinking in terms of control, ownership, and independence is the direction we want to go as we leave our childhood, and it is where we want our children to go as we teach them to accept responsibility and to develop self-reliance and self-discipline. Part of maturity is learning to control our emotions, our appetites, and our finances. Part of responsibility is learning to earn and to own and to take care of things, and we also want our children to take ownership of their grades and their goals. And all parents, whether we verbalize it this way or not, have the goal of working ourselves out of a job—helping our kids to be more and more independent and to need us less and less. So, besides being necessary economically, this is a desirable learning phase that everyone should go through.

The illusion of control, ownership, and independence is a useful phase, and, if we understand it properly, it can be a stepping-stone to three higher alternatives.

The problem comes when we stay in that stage too long and it becomes more obsessive and prevents us from realizing that there is something better and something truer. The problem comes when we desire control, ownership, and independence so much that we let the addiction take over our lives so that we never find the time or the insight we need to pull ourselves back and understand that these things are not actually attainable, nor would we want these three deceivers even if they were.

Interestingly then, the illusion of control, ownership, and independence is a useful phase, and, if we understand it properly, it can be a stepping-stone to three higher alternatives.

The breakthrough comes when we realize (see with our real eyes) that we don’t actually want the joy thieves. That realization is what frees us up to look for something better. With that in mind, ponder a couple of “really” questions:

Would you really like to control your life and the lives of those around you, or is that control better left to a higher power? Would you really like to own things that actually belong to us all or to something cosmic or spiritual (“your” children, “your” talents, or the various parts of the earth that you “own”)? And would you really want to be independent and alone rather than interdependent and connected?

The deeper, spiritual purposes and joys of life would be destroyed and frustrated if we really did have control and ownership and independence. How much more conducive to happiness it is to acknowledge our lack of control, ownership, and independence and do our best to learn to cope, get along, and develop under the circumstances and situations life puts us in.

What we need is a clear and correct alternative to each of the three false concepts. As we try to stop seeking and being obsessed with control, ownership, and independence, we need true replacement options to turn our attention and desire toward.

And there are true alternatives incorporated within a more complete view of life. Turning away from the three deceivers and focusing instead on their more spiritual alternatives is the key to accessing the happiness and joy that surrounds us—all we need to know is where (and how) to look.

Genuine balance in life, and the peace and fulfillment that come with that balance, is an inner thing obtained only by putting our desires in harmony with reality and with the way this world really works.

CHAPTER 2

WHY WE MUST DISPEL THE DECEIVERS BEFORE WE CAN ADOPT THEIR ALTERNATIVES

Chapter one was originally written as a widely circulated article, and it produced quite a response. The concept of control, ownership, and independence as bad things that work against our happiness rather than good things that bring us happiness struck a chord in many people and caused them to think and to worry. In my back-and-forth comments with readers of that article, we explored how the three deceivers work together to create frustration and discouragement; and we began to use the shorthand initialism of “CO&I” to talk about them collectively as a perspective and a paradox that works against our happiness.

Something deep inside each of us seems to recognize them for what they are—counterfeits, robbers of our peace and joy, and separators of us from our truest selves. For the next few chapters, our focus will be on the damage that our subconscious obsessions with CO&I—control, ownership, and independence—are doing to us.

The reason the other half of this book is reversed and turned upside down is that we need to physically separate these three deceivers from their three alternatives. But before those alternatives will be fully meaningful to you, or fully useful, you will have to be completely convinced that control, ownership, and independence can be dangerous and deceitful concepts that lead us in directions we don’t really want to go.

At this early point, you may be a long way from being convinced of that— because much of your life has been devoted to the pursuit of these three things, and few of us want to admit that we have been aiming in wrong directions. Even if we quickly recognize CO&I as deceivers, we may need some reinforcement before we find the courage to try to turn our lives away from them.

Recognize also that there are links between the three deceivers; they feed on each other and each of the three fosters and encourages the other two. They are all materialistic instincts th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Publishing Details
• Contents
• Foreward
• Dedication
• Preface
• CHAPTER 1: The Three Deceivers
• CHAPTER 2: Why We Must Dispel the Deceivers Before We Can Adopt Their Alternatives
• CHAPTER 3: How the Deceivers Deceive
• CHAPTER 4: A Brief History of Control, Ownership, and Independence
• CHAPTER 5: The Unhappiness Formula, Its Progression, and Its Catalyst
• CHAPTER 6: Changing Our Definition of Success
• CHAPTER 7: From Paradox to Paradigm
• CHAPTER 8: What Are the Three Alternatives? A Brief Intermission and Transition
• A BRIEF INTERMISSION AND TRANSITION
• Endnotes
• About the Author
• About Familius