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Paid attention to the Dow lately? It gets so much attention that a Martian visiting our planet would think of it as our religion, the central feature of our lives. Most of us know how happiness is not correlated to income after a certain point, however. But it seems we like to forget this—it is so much easier to make money and talk about making money than it is to live contentedly.
If psychology pays attention to its highest purpose and informs our Dow-infused consciousness on how to go about living fulfilled lives, flourishing as individuals and groups, then we need to look at how the people who are flourishing do it. That is where the rich opportunities for so much research lie: What constitutes happiness and flourishing and how do we go about attaining it and living in harmony with the principles that get us closer to that elusive contentment?
Brain research, mindfulness studies, and the psychology that emphasizes how to escape the negatives from our early life, all this psychological work gives us hope that we can indeed flourish if we work at it and have some luck. This blog has been devoted primarily to the early life part—hence its name, The Power of Your Past—and more recently on the boomers aging and retiring, and what opportunities for growth lie in this later life stage. I now want to turn to the happiness and contentment and flourishing themes in my professional life as a full time leadership coach and development professional.
So, stay tuned. And as a little preamble to the series on happiness, here is a small note above the din of the Dow and its amazing climb and the cumulative effort it fosters, measures, celebrates, and smears with human and now algorithmically programmed greed. Concupiscence was the old term for our capacity for ugly desire, so let me leave you with some beautiful words. They come from James Michener and describe how a vision of excellence is a good start to flourishing. (He does not mention the Dow, from my research on him):
Masters in the art of living draw no distinction between their work and their play, their labor and their leisure, their mind and the body, their education and their recreation. They hardly know which is which. They simply pursue their vision of excellence in whatever they are doing and leave it to others to decide whether they are working or playing. To themselves they are always doing both.
Toward such mastery we strive, Dow and all.
