Cultivating Happiness

In one of the positive psychology courses I took from U Penn, I was posed a thought experiment. If you meet a genie, who asked if you want to be a superhero, pick one of the two capes. There is a red cape, which gives you the power to eradicate bad things, such as huger, injustice, crime; and a green cape, which grants you the ability to cultivate good things, such as education, health, humanity. Which one will you choose?

I will start by sharing that I chose green cape because I prefer to focus on bringing about the good things in life, while acknowledging in some cases, it is more important to eradicate the bad things first. So part of the positive psychology is based upon the premise that we need a reversible cape and use each side appropriately. While it is true that in some cases, using red cape is a necessity (think about someone with an acute appendicitis, the life-saving move is to surgically remove the appendix, which is a red cape action, rather than focusing on green cape action such as nutrition and exercise).

So I chose the green cape, does that really mean that I am more positive than those who chose the red cape? Not necessarily. A couple of days after the encounter of this thought experiment, I slept poorly on one night. When you are feeling under the weather physically, the negative emotions usually take advantage of the vulnerability and try to stage a comeback and that’s how I felt in the afternoon. Frankly, I felt a bit frustrated. Did I not make any material progress in my battle against anxiety and a sense of loneliness? I felt uncomfortable so my mind tried to come up with all the tactics that can get me out of that feeling. Then a light bulb came on, am I actually overusing red cape here? Trying so hard to eradicate the discomfort, to make it go away, but it actually back fired. As soon as I realized this pattern, I redirected my focus to work on something that surely would make me feel a sense of enjoyment and flow (a green cape strategy). I was able to get my mind to return to a calm state without actually trying.

As Victor Frankl famously remarked “happiness and success cannot be pursued, they can only ensue”. I would extend this statement to almost all things in life, if you want to achieve sustained “anything”, you should not focus too much on achieving that outcome. Journey is the destination, happiness is the process of getting there.

Enjoy your journey, wherever you are and be well!