My sister shared a nice, short podcast clip with me where Jay Shetty discusses the keys to happiness. I found this very interesting. I am generally very sceptical of these ‘Guru’ who likes to preach about all sorts of things and constantly gives advice. This short moment from the podcast makes me think.
Pursuit of happiness is a universal goal for everyone; very few people are truly happy for a long period. There are always phases you go through where you are just not happy, not necessarily that means you are sad or depressed, but you are in that vicinity state where the things you are doing are not giving you satisfaction.
Jay Shetty says you are happy when you are in a state of flow, and we should try to achieve flow. “Flow is the intersection where your skills and your challenge match.” He explains why that is happiness, he says, “So if your skills are higher than your challenge, you’ll feel bored, lethargic, and maybe feel stuck. But if your challenge is greater than your skills, you feel overwhelmed, potentially depressed, disconnected, and disappointed.”. This point is very interesting, so what he means is that you should try to build up your skills to meet the challenge that you have set for yourself. Also, you cannot set a challenge that is too difficult to achieve. You need to find a perfect balance between the two.
Of course, this is easier said than done. It means you should know what you are capable of and set a target accordingly. It should not be easy to achieve, nor too hard. One of the ways he says is to keep working on it and keep creating new challenges. “Because that flow state, when you know you have a skill and your challenge is met, and even if you lose, you still get such joy out of it because you know that you’re still working in the right direction.”
He says to ask yourself the question, “Do you need to improve your skills or do you need to broaden your challenge?” “Is this a year of expanding your challenges or is this a year of broadening your skills?”
These are thought-provoking thoughts, worth thinking about.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2MeKTPdpeREQ6oxPKE1f6I?si=xxdbbvVTRv62Bg5Vvn5aBw