On the way to happiness or happiness on the way?

I had a thought the other day related to my current happiness-track. It requires a bit of background explanation to get to my point, I guess... 


When people ask me how I’m doing, a standard answer is (translated from the Danish “stille og roligt”) something along the lines of “nice and easy” or “slowly and quietly”. The people who know me well tend to know that this is however never actually the case… I’m always busy with a thousand things, and while I enjoy that, I must admit that I am also always expecting and looking forward to things slowing down a bit the next month or after a certain event. Of course, they never do.

I have a feeling that many people are in a similar situation as me, pushing themselves to an unreasonable stress level with the expectation of things slowing down around the next corner. And THEN they can be happy – they think. I think many people will realise that things do in fact NOT slow down, thus continuing the high pace till they burn out. Reaching the happiness goal they strived for? I think not.

Say they DID reach their goal, with things slowing down/a high income/the right job/(insert-personal-goal). Does this ensure happiness? Again, I think not.

I’m not saying reaching life goals does not make you happy. Obviously, without reaching any of our goals, life would be unsatisfying, unfair, and depressing. What I’m saying is that we need to enjoy the process as well – because “being on the way” is the only constant in our lives.

Now it’s becoming a bit abstract I guess, and hard for me to explain, but let me break it down. We will always be in a process-state. It is the only thing you can count on: everything changing. Your goals included! Regardless of whether you reach your goals or not, as time passes and things evolve, your idea of your destination changes as well, so you will always somehow be on the way towards the goal. The final destination in this regard is unreachable (till death, but considering the happiness aspect, that’s irrelevant in this regard (depending on one’s religious beliefs of course, but that’s again beyond my scope here!)).

The idea of a moving target brings me to my point – or one of them at least. :) If you forget to enjoy the process, your happiness experience will be limited to the moments of reaching whatever goal you were striving for. Limited because of the fact that new goals will follow, continuously rendering you unsatisfied with your current state. Even millionaires want to make more money, right?

Nothing wrong with striving for your dreams (in fact I think its crucial to dream), but without appreciating the beauty of the imperfect process for a seemingly perfect goal, your life might become a series of races towards an ever-moving finish line. We’re back at the “happiness is a perfect-moment-snapshot-concept”, acknowledging that perfection is imperfect.

So maybe make it a goal itself to enjoy the way to our other goals – treasure the process! :)

Why perfection isn't perfect

I just came back from a theater performance called "Darkness" (Mørke - se mere her!). I didn't quite know what to expect from the show, only that it would have a peculiar scenography and an innovative approach to telling a story about stress. 

So, it turns out to be a one man show, the stage is set as a simplistic apartment with a cupboard, a table, a chair, a flat screen TV, and white walls. The walls at times serve as a screen for projections of pictures and figures, which support the story; e.g. a projection of a calendar filling up with blocks of meetings or of the actor, when he has an out of body experience. The furniture is used as a setting for several different scenes, without actually changing the stage - very impressive how many different images they managed to create with those simple measures!

From http://www.nbt.dk/

The story is about a man who becomes stressed. His job brings him around the world to companies, where he gives presentations about how they should focus on success and opportunities instead of failure and problems. (If I could identify myself with this job? Hehe, erm... Yeah, a bit, a recent example being in England, delivering a training about optimism...)

Anyway... This guy talks about how you can get anything you want if you believe in your dreams. Break down your dream into realizable goals and go for it! Success is within reach! Obviously he tries to live by this mantra himself, but at some point he loses touch with reality, and develops a psychosis due to his stress. 

The irony is similar to what I described in my previous post about happiness. People striving for happiness, forgetting to enjoy the ride - forgetting that happiness is rather the process than the aim. 

What I need to say after the performance tonight is that success isn't to equal happiness. Perfection isn't necessarily perfect. 

Why am I saying this? Well, as you know, I like to reflect by writing, and I feel like there is a lesson for me (and you?) to learn here: We strive for success in the belief that it will bring happiness. As I am unable to see the future I can't say that this assumption is necessarily wrong, but it might not come true. The pursuit for success and happiness can make us unhappy, if we forget to keep in touch with ourselves and our values on the way. We run so fast to get to the goal, not realising that we might just be pushing it further away. 

It's the same with perfection. I feel like perfection is a balance - if something is too perfect, it stops being perfect! Yeah, I know this is a bit contradictory (just a little bit! ;)), but consider the fact that you can always do more, however maybe wasting your resources overworking the product (or whatever). You could have spent your energy on something else, something more important. As a perfectionist myself, I need to keep in mind that good is good enough. Thus, perfection is a balance between the thing or task (or whatever) you are focusing on and its surroundings. 

I am however also contradicting myself a bit here, previously claiming that happiness is a snapshot of perfection, existing only when ignoring the imperfections. Maybe that statement should be amended to appreciating the imperfections rather than ignoring them? Meaning that happiness exists in the situation where you come to terms with the imperfections, appreciating that they are part of what makes the picture perfect - part of what makes you happy? 

In that sense, imperfection creates the contrast to perfection, without which perfection could not exits. 

Thoughts about happiness

In the past two days, spending time with some of the most incredible people in the world (the LSS trainers <3), I have gained some insights, which I have been trying to grasp for a while. I hope this post can help me define what I was looking for and what I found.

I have the impression that some people are looking for happiness throughout their lives, in some cases maybe never reaching a feeling of being truly happy. They are painting a rosy picture of what it will take for them to be happy (possibly including the perfect spouse, beautiful children, (insert personal dream), etc.). I think this quest has something to do with perfectionism overall - always striving for something better. This means that in the search for happiness they prevent themselves from feeling happy. Ironic, huh...

For me, happiness is the ability to realise that everything is good, even when it might not exactly be true. But letting myself believe and feel that it is. Tonight I was happy. Everything inside me was at peace, I felt absolutely and truly satisfied with where I was right there and then. Breaking this down, happiness is about appreciating what you have in a certain moment, being able to shut any disturbances out.

Happiness is elusive, though. As soon as you start analysing it, the feeling will be gone. (Like the atom model: you cannot know both where the atom is and what its speed is, for those of you who are into that kind of analogies... ;)) The moment is fragile - you can only appreciate it when you have it, 'cause when you start thinking about why you are happy you will break the focus, and you cannot feel happy and analyse the feeling at the same time. Why not? Because happiness is a bit of perfection in a vacuum of time and space, and perfection cannot exist outside the vacuum moment. This also means that there can't be various degrees of happiness (since perfect is, well, perfect). Further, this means that the way you can measure happiness (if in some case you would like to talk about quantification) is by counting how often you feel happy, and not how happy you feel. Anyway...

Am I deceiving myself into feeling happy? Disregarding the negative (or just non-optimal) things around me? Hmm... Yes. And I treasure the ability to be able to do that. :)

Happiness is a state of mind. I believe in that now more than ever - despite the fact that I have had this text hanging on my wall for 8 years.

See, someone agrees! ;)

 Make sure to check out 

the subsequent blogpost - 

Why perfection isn't perfect!

PhD considerations

For a while now, I have been considering continuing my education by writing a PhD after graduation with my master of pharmacy degree. I have however also discarded the idea again. Now I’m at the point where I need to consider the pros and cons, and hence this blog post!

There is one main point is this, which has been crucial to me along the way – Freedom. A couple of years as PhD student would probably give me freedom to travel as I have experienced during my studies, and hence the opportunity to continue with trainings etc. Question then is… Do I want to? I think the answer to that is “yes”. I don’t know what the purposes of my travels will be, but I’m pretty sure something will come up. :)

Actually its not just the freedom to travel “randomly”, but also the opportunity to study and live abroad. A PhD would be pretty perfect for that, allowing me to learn about my PhD topic from other perspectives. Hmm… Already starting to dream, hehe…

Another freedom-aspect is what my thesis advisor, Lotte, mentioned a few weeks ago. A PhD degree would give me a certain status, a certain freedom to define my own area of work. However, here comes also one of my concerns. A PhD would mean that I would be very highly specialised, and that thought scares me a bit. Not sure why, though… Maybe because I’m not entirely sure what I want to work with? What my area of specialisation should be?

I talked with my friend Anton about that the other day. My vision at the moment is to be working with personal, professional, and profession development, and I have a special interest in continuing the work from my master thesis about Interprofessional Education. This links very well with the profession development-aspect. Also, I could focus on the improvement of the physician/pharmacist relations, but like Anton mentioned, I might need more professional experience before actually being able to undertake such work.

Hence, I am considering finding a temporary job in a community pharmacy, in order to get sort of a reality check. Another option, which would however not give me the clinical experience, is to work in the university. As it looks now, the faculties of pharmacy and medicine will be merged in 2012, and I see that as a great opportunity to work with IPE! And with all the inspiration, ideas, and connection I gained in the IPE conference in Arizona, I really wouldn’t mind continuing down that lane.

At the moment of writing, I am on my way home from my visit to USA, waiting for my connection in London. My plan is to go back to my faculty and try to convince them to hire me to do IPE coordination. Meanwhile, I will be looking into job opportunities in pharmacies, but I also have to consider something very short term – the Danish social security system only allows for unemployed to be “inactive” for maximum three months, meaning that from the beginning of 2012 I will have to be doing something. Could be course work, e.g. in lean management, could be kind of an internship, or well - a real job. ;)

Also, I will investigate the PhD possibilities. After all, my list of pros and cons in this text points quite clearly in the “go-for-it” direction! 

Post graduation

YEAY, I've graduated! :) Now I am finally a real pharmacists, with the fancy "Cand. Pharm" title! My defense went really well, and I am very proud to have wrapped up my 6 years of studying! Here is a link to the video recording of my defense. 

As I was describing in previous posts, I am not sure what I want to work with professionally. I have many ideas though, and I am currently working on a strategy to get a job that makes sense! More about this later on. Right now I'd like to turn to a slightly more frustrated topic - being unemployed. 

During my studies I was always looking forward to holidays and graduation... Time where I didn't have to feel bad because I was neglecting my homework, friends, workout, etc. I was looking forward to free time, time I could spend reading books, with friends, at museums, going through old photos, or whatever. Now I have time, and what do I do? Nothing... I have more time at hand than ever before, fewer tasks and responsibilities, but I get nothing done. Yet I am also more stressed, than I've been for a long time!

Its a bit of a paradox... It takes A LOT of "busy-ness" to stress me out, but I can't handle not to be busy. I get frustrated and lazy, despite the fact that I actually have a lot of things to do. I could easily fill my day with productive tasks, but I can't even really point out how I actually spend my time! All the projects I've been working on during my studies now appear to be unmanageably demanding, though the amount of work is the same and I have more time than ever.

So well, lesson learned - being busy is good for me. :) Therefore, the meeting I had with my thesis advisor, Lotte, November 8th, came at a good time. We agreed that I should spend some time writing a journal article from my thesis, which will give me a bit of actual work to do in December. I left the meeting feeling energized and motivated to get started - another sign that I really need to find a job, I suppose!

Late night talking

Soundtrack: Sigur Rós - Samskeyti

A month ago I found myself in a very beneficial situation. I was in my living room with two amazing girls, Lies from the Netherlands and Kajsa from Sweden, both trainers in this years edition of Leadership Summer School (LSS). It was one of those nights where you feel like time stands still, and the world revolves around you and that room only. I'm not sure where the talk started, and there is unfortunately no way I can recall all the details, but I feel like I went to bed a lot wiser.

Kajsa, me, and Lies

We talked about us. Our families, our experiences, and our personal development, especially in the light of LSS. We talked about others. The people we worked with in LSS, the trainers, participants, and the organisers. We gossiped, sharing our perspectives and impressions about personalities and situations - mirroring ourselves and reflecting about out experiences.

We talked about opening one door, and finding ten new doors to choose from behind the first one. We discussed how some people are blindfolded, and never see the first door. That others are too narrow minded to see all the next ten. And that some people are too scared to open any of them. 

We talked about the universe, and what is beyond. And how did we end up out there, you may ask? Well, it was about the doors I think, relating it to the movie "Sliding Doors" where the story develops in two different directions determined by if the main character catches a train or not. The same idea with our doors - is there an infinite number of parallel universes, all differing a bit because of the choices we make?

We talked about relationships. What it is we need, and what we definitely don't need! Whether the craving for personal development ever stops; if you can find a man who is so balanced, that he doesn't need to read any more books? We concluded that someone who feels no need for self development would have a cocky approach to life, and would indeed most likely not be considered potential. Such a man would belong in the group of people who do not see the doors mentioned above.

We talked about some very personal things. I was unintentionally coached into realising some things I need to do - and afterwards, we realised it had been just like a coaching session, and unintentionally started debriefing it. Then we realised that we were debriefing, and started laughing, shaking our heads to the fact that we are so unable to separate our trainer-way-of-thinking from non-training-related matters. And from there, I believe we got into talking about how much we have indeed learned about ourselves, others, and the world through trainings.

We talked about the power we as trainers can have on the people around us. About the responsibility that comes with an ability like that, and how it can be abused to manipulate people. About how important it is to show people a door, but not drag them through it.

So what did I learn that night, between midnight and 5 AM?

Well, I got some specific suggestions I want to work on, and I was reminded that the world can be seen from many perspectives. That it matters to ask others for their opinions, and that their stories can also make a difference in my life. I learned how big an impact I can have on other people.

And, I was reminded just how important it is to have friends. Really good friends.

We recapped the night talk over a 4 hour brunch the next day. :) 

Do something every day that scares you

Soundtrack: Everybody's free to wear sunscreen (watch it first, then put it on again while reading... :))


Written August 17th
I went swimming today, and in the showers they have this huge bucket mounted so it can be tipped and spill like 25 L of water over whoever is brave enough to pull the rope. It reminded me of the Bazz Luhrman speech/song "Everybody is free to wear sunscreen" - an excellent speech to a graduating class full of advice for life. One of them is "Do something every day that scares you" (at 1.30 mins in the video).

And I started wondering... What scares me?

That bucket of water scares me. And now that I am sitting here, working on my thesis, needing some action, I almost regret that I didn't pull the robe. Well, next time I will. I promise...!


September 1st
So, now I have been to the pool twice after I wrote that I would pul that robe, and....... (drum roll)... I have become a very big fan of the cold water bucket! Really so refreshing - not just because of the cold water, but also having to face yourself, saying "DO IT!", realising it will be a shock. And then afterwards, feeling proud and vikingly, it can only be a good day. :)

I have continued thinking about what scares me. I posted the question "What scares you" on my Facebook profile, expecting that people would post some suggestions that I could learn from... Instead, they pointed out that the things that scares them (such as jumping out of the window from the 9th floor), is not the kind of thing you would like to do. Especially not one thing every day, though one would be unlikely to survive even day 1.

That made me think more about the meaning of the phrase, or maybe more about the purpose. For me, the point is that facing my fears helps me grow, because I move my boundaries each time. Of course the literal statement needs to be taken with a grain of salt, but still I find it to be a very useful challenge!

I went on to google it. "What scares you" - it led to other blogs, where the same question has been discussed, with some thought evoking results. There are different levels of scary things I suppose: Obviously there are the things that might kill you, leading to a very healthy fear indeed... There are bad things that might happen that you cannot prevent (death, disease, and other unfortunate events). Also, there are things such as letting people down, not living your dreams, etc., which are also not the kind of fears you wanna put to the test every day, just because it scares you.

No, the kind of scary things I am after are the challenges. I will keep my eyes open and inform in a later post what I figure out. As always, suggestions are very welcome! :)