I’ve been really enjoying researching what drives us recently and seeing that although it seems happiness is not a bad concept to have that ultimately we seem to be at our best when we just have meaning. When we have something we are working to which is connecting us to something. It’s important here to dig into the sometimes negative notion that we are somewhat happiest or the idea that we are meant to be happiest when we are doing nothing, sitting around relaxing etc.

It’s not that these times are in themselves bad but what I’m seeing is that we are at our truest state of happiness when we are finding meaning and we are in flow and accessing flow states (see book by this name).

I feel the idea of just being ‘happy’ can be a bad one and seems to be quite a western thing which somehow splits us off from a level of necessary pain and pushing through and making progress through finding meaning which is actually what really makes us happy.

The breakthrough moments when we achieve something. Peak experiences as Maslow called them relate to this well. True happiness (meaning) occurs when we are in a state of productivity, of moving through and changing from the person we are to the person we are becoming.

Happiness in a truer sense occurs when we have meaning and feel like we are making progress