There are all sorts of ways of being happy, but some of them aren’t so successful in the long-term. Hedonistic lifestyles, for example, with their late nights, bad habits and money-burning tendencies, tend to fizzle out early. But balancing pleasure with purpose in your life is a winning combination for sustaining joy and satisfaction.
Behavioural scientist Paul Dolan writes in his bestseller, Happiness by Design, that you first need to understand what propels you: the pursuit of pleasure or a sense of purpose. If you can balance out these two impulses where you are lacking, you can produce subtle but wonderful effects. The purposeful will find more pleasure in stopping to enjoy what surrounds them, and the sybarite will gain ballast from a deeper meaning in their daily life.
Former F1 world champion Jenson Button finds both purpose and pleasure in his sport and has learned to place more focus on the joy of racing itself, rather than the outcome. “I race cars and I love the fight,” he said recently. “Whether you’re winning or not, it’s the fight that keeps you here, keeps you hungry.” In particular, Button’s positive philosophy has served him well during periods of adversity. “Because I love this sport so much, I feel that I’ve been able to find a way out of the situation and be more positive and help the team move forward.”
Purpose doesn’t have to mean your every move is in the spirit of public service or achieving something of note; it also describes the feeling of satisfaction you get from doing your accounts or tidying your overflowing wardrobe. Purposeful acts can also feed into the end result of pleasure. For example, if you keep your garden tidy and tended (purpose) you can have fabulous parties with admiring friends on your newly mown lawn (pleasure). Mechanical engineer and motorcycle racer Eva Håkansson finds purpose in toiling over her custom electric motorbike in her workshop. The payoff is that the bike, Killajoule, has helped her become the fastest female motorcyclist in the world. “I’m the modern version of the crazy inventor working in the shed,” she says. “There’s a sense of deep satisfaction that comes from making something.”
Striking the balance between purpose and pleasure is, according to Dolan, the route to happiness. One reason why is the law of diminishing marginal returns, which means that we are less and less satisfied with things the more we have of them. Mixing it up is a far more interesting and productive way to live.
“Whether or not anything is worth doing depends on your experience of pleasure and purpose,” Dolan writes. That makes sense – if you’re basically a pleasure-seeker, you should pick your purposeful ballast along the lines of your natural inclinations, not simply nail on something that sounds “significant” to impress others. Consider, instead, what has meant something to you in your past, and start there when looking for extra purpose.
Growing up in north-east Brazil, professional surfer Silvana Lima spent most days at the beach surfing, playing soccer or practicing the martial art capoeira. “I felt so much joy doing all those things. They gave me a similar feeling of happiness, of everything being good.” Yet it was surfing that Lima chose to make a career out of, because it was the sport in which she found her purpose.
“I chose surfing as it would bring more money for my family and give me a lot of opportunities,” she says. Ultimately, pursuing a career in surfing and focusing on the sheer joy of it brought her both happiness and success.
“If I had to stop now and look at what I’ve achieved I’d still be happy. Knowing I did something great with my life and helped my family.”
Living a “good life” means finding a way to blend the excitement and the everyday into something that always sustains you, and suits your needs and desires. Every individual is a little different, but following the pleasure-purpose principle is a great way of finding the right path.
Louise Chunn is the founder of welldoing.org, which matches you with the therapist or counsellor most suited to your needs
Joy will take you further
Inspired by a specially commissioned paper by psychologist and happiness expert Dr Matt Killingsworth, Johnnie Walker, along with global ambassadors including actor Jude Law and Jenson Button, is embracing the idea that it is the pursuit of joy, rather than money or status alone, that will take you further.
Discover more about Johnnie Walker and how embracing joy will take you further at johnniewalker.com or head to Johnnie Walker on Facebook
