The Five Thieves of Happiness by John B. Izzo Ph.D

Author:John B. Izzo , Ph.D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Published: 2016-10-31T04:00:00+00:00

what is success?

Expressing gratitude by itself is not enough to tame the thief, however. To banish the thief, we must learn to live by our own compass rather than someone else’s. The thief wants us to judge our success in life by the answer from the magic mirror, by looking out and comparing ourselves with others instead of focusing on our own path.

Years ago a 100-year-old woman named Lucy admonished me to never compare myself with others because everyone has different gifts. The thief always wants us to believe that what we need is what someone else has. We become like a cartoon I saw years ago that featured four cows at the intersection of four farms, each with her head stretched across the fence to eat the grass on another farm. We always think what someone else has is what we need to be happy.

Here is a personal example of how coveting can focus us on the wrong things. I have loved sports my entire life, having grown up in a neighborhood full of boys, where sports were the major source of identity. I would have loved to have been six foot four with great athletic ability, but I am five foot seven with average athletic ability. As a child, I coveted the athletic prowess of the neighbor boys who had it, and that robbed me of much happiness, even causing me to diminish the gifts I did have. This attitude also separated me from enjoying the other boys’ successes because my coveting of their skill would not allow me to fully celebrate them without diminishing myself. My best friend’s older brother was a high-school baseball star with the potential to be drafted to the major leagues. With embarrassment I now admit that I once secretly rooted for him to lose a big game that I was watching. Here was a person whom I liked and admired, and there I was, rooting for him to fail!

The thief not only made me miserable but kept me from truly celebrating others’ good fortune. When we live our life in comparison with others, like the wicked queen did with Snow White, we not only find ourselves unhappy but we cannot share the joy of others because their happiness makes us feel less good about ourselves.

This may help explain the rather common angst that people often feel on social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram. Some research studies have suggested an inverse relationship between use of social media and happiness. A study in Denmark by the Happiness Institute demonstrated increases in happiness when people stop using Facebook for two weeks. The study suggests that envy or coveting may be the key cause of this inverse relationship.6 Looking at the postings of others, we may find ourselves asking, Who has the most interesting life of all, the most friends of all, and the most likes of all? The thief wants us to always be looking over to see what our neighbor, our co-worker, and the family down the road or across the city has instead of what we have.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.