Rainbow And Colour of It All! Be Happy

Chasing rainbow and hoping to find a pot of gold at the end of it ...so romantic, so enticing...When we were more youthful and hopeful, we must have been memerised by such thoughts.

What is it that we are chasing? Riches or happiness. Will we be happy when we attain material wealth? Maybe .... perhaps not. So if we pursue happiness, if ever that is achievable, do we need material wealth? Taking a step back, we need to ask ourselves what is happiness? What does it mean to be happy?

We need to remember that life is a journey, and happiness our companion. What better option can we make? We can liken happiness to a transaction where we experience for a fleeting moment of ~ truth. In a transaction, we come into contact with a stimulus and how we response defines whether the experience is quality ( happiness ) or otherwise.


How is it that we feel more often than not that life remains unfulfilled? Could be that we lack quality experiences. Maybe it is the lack of empathy that prevents us from such experiences.

First movers fear it is against their interest to initiate a discussion and the end result is that we miss an opportunity to co-operate. This can be categorised as a co-ordination issue. When there is a break-down in co-ordination, there will be no meaningful progress, and any underlying issue will be allowed to fester and there would be risk of a disorderly outcome. The likely scenario is a stimulus that is likely to attract a zero-sum gain, a positive response at the expense of someone's negative response. Is it possible to have a win-win outcome, where happiness can be shared? Can people really sit down and negotiate according to a set of rules , unwritten but underpinned by a set of common beliefs. If no, why not?
Again it is back to the coordination issue .... what is the driver when a certain course of action is selected? More often than not, we use price as the basis to find the equilibrium between supply and demand. We may have taken the short-term view that the best result will come .... from everyone in the group doing what is best for himself . However, John Nash has added a caveat "and the group". According to him, " if we go for the best ( by definition scarce )... we block each other. Not a single one of us is gonna get it. So then we go for her friends, but they will all give us the cold shoulder because nobody likes to be second choice. Well, what if none goes for the best? We don't get in each other's way, and we don't insult the others. That's the only way we win. "
The following questions can help us understand better what is preventing us from feeling happy?

a)when you are NOT achieving what you set out to do, would you feel upset?

b)can you work around the setback and find an acceptable alternative?

c) why is it so important to achieve your goal?

Goal setting is process-driven and you need to understand what are the steps you require to take to reach from here to there. Too often, we make quick and unsubstantiated assumptions, and as a result we are not able to get to our goal. There is no short cut and when you analyse your mis-steps you will realise what are the stimuli that trigger the negative response.

Dealing with human emotion is one of the most challenging and difficult tasks. There are myriad of moving components at play and we cannot control the outcome as interests are not completely aligned. Again we can identify the stimuli that trigger the negative response.

So fundamentally, we need to identify like-minded people with shared values to begin with. So how can we convince people that cooperation is better than competition?

When it comes to co-operation, we need to think big but act in baby steps. This helps to breakdown complex issues into simpler elements. We need to underpin the efficacy of our assumptions and execute the steps in logical sequence. Every successful step reinforces trust and with trust it is possible to overcome the coordination issue. Once collaborators are comfortable and confident that cooperation can result in a win-win outcome, the end-to-end processes can then take on a life of its own with its own ecosystem of checks and balances - and we can sit back and enjoy the ride and have happiness as our companion.