I took a two month blog hiatus to turn 40 which I did exactly one week ago. Over the years, I found that many INFPs I’ve met in their 40′s and 50′s are some of the happiest people I know. So am I happier now than I was last week?

Happiness and Control

Happiness is directly proportional to the control we feel we have in fulfilling our needs.

For example, I know a few INFPs wanting new jobs. Their current one is terrible and getting worse by the hour. They’ve had good jobs turn bad before. What they did before was quit, take some time off, then sent out a zillion resumes and got rehired quickly after. They have great qualifications, but in this economy they feel stuck.

They’re more unhappy because they feel stuck. They’d be less unhappy with a bad job situation if they felt they could quit at any time and get another job immediately. If we feel we have no control in getting a job, a relationship, a fulfilling life and that something external like the economy or fate controls our ability to meet our needs, then we are unhappy.

Quick Overview of our six Critical needs: Certainty, Uncertainty, Love/Connection, Critical Significance, Growth, and Contribution.

In my early 20′s, my biggest need was Love and Connection. All I wanted was a girlfriend. I also felt I had no control over that. It seemed the only way I would ever find a significant other would be for the universe would send someone my way who would recognize something special in me. I wasn’t good at dating or meeting girls. It was up to fate. All my other accomplishments didn’t make me happier because the one thing in my life that I needed at that time, I felt I had no control over.

Happiness is about the feeling of control not the feeling of accomplishment. A few years later, I met someone. It wasn’t officially becoming boyfriend and girlfriend that made me happy. I was happy long before she became my girlfriend. It was meeting her and both of us knowing we had potential together. Having a girlfriend was no longer in control of the whims of the universe. The beyond-my-control part of the equation was out of the way because “fate” brought someone my way. Having a potential girlfriend wasn’t what made me happy. Knowing that I was the only one who could screw up from there on made me happy.

Happiness Isn’t Satisfaction

Satisfaction comes from accomplishment, from getting what we want. We work hard for a promotion or save for a vacation. We get the promotion. We go on vacation. At first we feel happy, but the promotion came with more responsibility that took more time and the vacation didn’t turn out as perfect as we has hoped. We’re happy but also unhappy at the same time.

The reason for this happy/unhappy pull comes from confusing satisfaction with happiness. Fulfilling a desire makes us feel satisfied whether it’s buying something we wanted or achieving a goal. Growth is all about understanding and meeting needs. When we accomplish something we have proof that we are in control of our Growth need. This is where happiness from satisfaction stems.

Since we feel satisfaction and happiness when we accomplish something, we think they’re the same. However, we’re only happy if we accomplish something that makes us grow from where we were before. That’s why we may get a sense of satisfaction doing a big house cleaning, but it doesn’t make us that much happier because we know we’ll be doing it again in a few months.

Completing regular chores doesn’t help us grow because we’ve done it before. That’s why doing the same things day after day brings unhappiness for many INFPs. There’s no feeling of growth. There’s no sense of control over our growth unless we allow ourselves to do things that challenge us.

That’s why INFP quickly grow dissatisfied with jobs after the learning process. As soon as the job becomes the same variation of tasks, it no longer meets our Growth need. Unless that job also meets a Contribution need (helping others) or a Critical Significance need (makes you feel special) then job satisfaction diminishes.

Happiness and Dissatisfaction

Since happiness and satisfaction are separate things, we can be happy and dissatisfied. It’s called the comfort zone. Eventually, INFPs shift their locus of control internally. We focus on the things that we can do to affect change which gives us a sense of control over our path in life.

However, having a sense of control and doing something with it are two different things. My 30′s was a period of great happiness and great dissatisfaction. The happiness came from feeling I could control my own destiny. The dissatisfaction came from not doing anything about it.

I have a wonderful family, a good job and for the most part I’m free from major worries. Basically, I felt only I could screw up my life. However, not screwing up my life isn’t the same as making my life better. Dissatisfaction came from resting on my laurels. I could have been more but didn’t do anything because I was happy with what I had.

INFPs start unhappy and satisfied. In our 20′s, we get a job. We get a significant other. But it seemed by chance because if we lost the job or the significant other, we aren’t sure how we got them in the first place. Eventually we grow into ourselves. If we lose the job, we’ll find another one. If we our hearts get broken, we realize that we can cope and find love again. We become more happy as we feel more sure about getting things we need.

However, INFPs move to happiness and dissatisfaction because as we become more sure in our ability to meet our needs, we recognize more potential in ourselves then we thought. That recognition of greater potential in turn grows our vision of our Ideal Self. We create the Ideal Self that matches our potential. As our potential grows, our Ideal Self grows making it seem harder to reach. I call it the Paradox of INFP Growth: dissatisfaction grows as we become increasingly better at making ourselves happier.

Happiness is a Moving Target

I’ve never understood being generally happy. It’s like breaking your leg and saying I’m generally healthy.

Unmet needs are like injuries. In a car accident, we don’t notice contusions on our face if we have a broken femur. At 20, I never thought about my lack of Certainty (no job stability) because of my lack of Love and Connection. When I finally did get a girlfriend, I started noticing all the other unmet needs. I realized how little control I had over meeting those other needs. So at 22, I was happy about the girlfriend and unhappy about everything else.

We are happy about some things and unhappy about others. This is a constant condition and it’s okay. In daily life, we only have so much time to divide among our 6 critical needs. Maybe we focus on work (Certainty) because we’ve been slacking lately, but that takes time from family (Love/Connection). Maybe our job doesn’t make us feel important (Critical Significance) so we volunteer (Contribution) or take up a hobby that challenges us (Growth).

Striving for balance doesn’t work well because if something hurts more, it’s hard to concentrate on what hurts less. If we accidentally trip and skin our knee and break our arm, we’re not going to find balance and treat them equally. We fix what hurts the most. If we don’t have a job, we focus on paying food and rent (Certainty) before we worry about moving to a job that makes us feel fulfilled (Critical Significance). It’s rare that we’ll ever be able to meet all 6 of our needs equally. We concentrate on what’s urgent now and then move on to the next one.

It’s possible to be happy with everything, just not all at the same time.

Happiness Now and Then

Happiness is a journey not a destination. You don’t become happy. You’re happy becoming. I think about happiness much less at 40 than I did at 20.

At 20, I was obsessed with figuring out what I could do to make myself happy. If I learned some esoteric skill (fencing, Tarot, martial arts, etc.), I’d have Critical Significance in knowing something most other people didn’t. If I limited my friendship to a select group of people, then of course I’d naturally build stronger Love and Connection bonds. This is what I thought at 20. But friends came and went and no one really cares what I knew unless it helped them. Everyone is trying to meet their needs too.

At 40, I think about happiness occasionally. Being happy isn’t something that I have control over. Controlling your happiness is forcing yourself to remember something that’s right at the tip of your brain. The harder you try to remember, the more elusive it becomes. The harder I try doing things that I think will make me happy, the more disappointed I become when the results are less ideal than I imagined.

Since I have no control over making myself happy then focusing on it only makes me unhappy. Instead as I’ve gotten older I focus on the one thing I can control: me—my thoughts, my beliefs, my attitude and my actions.

I wait less. I value my time more so I’m less prone to lose it in the randomness that seeps into INFP life. I find myself saying “Where did my day go” less often. Even if I fritter away my hours, I stay present in my less than productive activities instead of “comfort-zoning” on auto because misplacing days is always much worse than losing them on purpose.

When I don’t think about happiness, being happy is simpler.

At 20, I created monumental goals. Accomplishing these goals would make me happy. The more I thought about those goals, the more stuck I became at the scope of what I wanted to do. Today, I still have those exact same goals.

The difference is that I don’t focus on accomplishing those goals. I focus on becoming the person who can accomplish those goals. I just do one thing that makes be better than I was the day before. Sometimes that one thing is so small I don’t feel a sense of accomplishment doing it. I only know that I’m better off than yesterday. Then on those occasions where I do think about happiness like when I’m writing about it for this blog, I realize that I’m happier than I’ve been before.

Then I stop thinking about it. Not thinking about happiness makes me better off than I was the day before, better off than last week when I was in my 30s.

Watch the video.

If you don’t have the 21 minutes to watch the video, here’s the important parts:

Two kinds of happiness – There are two kinds of happiness: natural happiness and synthetic happiness. Natural happiness is happiness we get when get what we want. Synthetic happiness is synthesized happiness. It’s happiness we make when we don’t get what we want.

Natural happiness is not better – Synthetic happiness produces a measurable, testable change. People are not just making it up when they say they’re happy despite not getting what they want. The video talks about an experiment that was done to prove this.

Before choosing, choices promote natural happiness – When you don’t have to choose, having a lot of choices makes you naturally happy.

After choosing, choices inhibit the creation of synthetic happiness – When we have the ability to change our minds, we become less happy because we aren’t sure if we made the right decision. The video talks about a Harvard psychological experiment that demonstrates this.

How this applies to INFPs

INFPs have problems making decisions for two reasons:

1. We want to make the right choice, the perfect choice. We end up wasting a lot of time trying to gather up enough data for us to choose. This could be anything from which career to pursue to where to eat today.
2. After we make the choice and as soon as the first sign of adversity hits us, we start thinking that if we had made the perfect choice then we wouldn’t have all these problems. So we start second guessing that choice. Should we have chosen something else?

It’s this second guessing that inhibits our ability to find happiness in the choice we made. This is synthetic happiness and I believe synthetic happiness is real. I believe it’s real because INFPs create synthetic happiness all the time.

Every time on a forum thread where I see an INFP saying that the world wasn’t created for INFPs to successful that’s an INFP creating synthetic happiness. I see the creation of synthetic happiness in every excuse INFPs use to blame our unhappiness on things we believe are outside their control (I’m shy and can’t meet people, the world doesn’t understand me). We make ourselves better by saying that our lot in life isn’t really our choice.

Second guessing kills happiness and success

Could we have made a better choice? Maybe. Here’s the real question. How much time are we going to waste wondering if we made the right decision instead of fully committing to the decision we did make?

Success and self-esteem go hand-in-hand. When we succeed at something we feel better about ourselves. Success and happiness aren’t directly related because we can succeed at something unimportant which won’t make us happy. There’s a saying. When climbing the ladder of success, make sure it’s leaning against the right wall.

I’m talking about all types of success. Success at making friends. Success at becoming financially stable. Success at becoming our Ideal Self. However, success requires dedication and full commitment. INFPs never make that full commitment because think we can go back and make a better choice.

Success doesn’t lead to happiness, but the self-confidence we gain will keep us going until we finally succeed at something that does bring natural happiness. So if natural happiness comes from getting what we want? Does this mean we’re unhappy getting to what we want? Of course, people can be happy in the journey, but it’s the happiness we find in the journey. It’s the happiness we make. It’s synthetic happiness.

Burning bridges leads to happiness

When we have no choice but to succeed, we will do everything we can possibly do not to fail. We will work our asses off to not fail because failing means dire consequences.

When I was 19, I moved out my parent’s house. I just couldn’t live with them and their rules any longer. So with no job, one month’s rent and telling my parents I’m never speaking to them again, I moved in with some friends. I had to find a job fast, anything. I couldn’t fail because I had nowhere else to go. I ended up finding a job serving popcorn at a movie theater.

I didn’t waste anytime second-guessing my decision because I couldn’t unmake my decision. It was do or die. So instead of that energy focused behind me. All my energy was focused on succeeding. I was never happier.

Committing to choices means risk especially if we can’t go back. INFPs rarely regret the choices we made that didn’t turn out well because it makes us into the people we are. INFPs regret the choices we didn’t make because it’s another lost opportunity to discover more about ourselves. It’s another chance to become our Ideal Self that we didn’t take.

The best thing about making choices we can’t back out of, we are happier. As that Harvard experiment in the video demonstrates, we come to decide that we like the decision we made because we don’t have a choice.

]]> http://www.infpblog.com/favorites/happiness-means-burning-bridges/feed/ 23 http://www.infpblog.com/happiness/embrace-the-life-you-never-planned/ http://www.infpblog.com/happiness/embrace-the-life-you-never-planned/#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:30:32 +0000 Corin http://www.infpblog.com/?p=398 If things had worked out the way I wanted, I would have been Spider-Man by now. Unfortunately, radioactive spiders are to hard come by. Who knew? Whether you're 14 or 40, you've probably figured out that things don't always go they way we want. I didn't get the cool bike I wanted for Christmas when I was eight. I didn't date the pretty poetess from drama class when I was sixteen. I wanted to have my first novel written by twenty-six. I wanted to be retired by now. Things didn't work out, but this doesn't mean I will stop wanting. It's good to want things. Buddhism says wanting leads to suffering. Duh. Wanting also brought the world vaccinatons and the microchip. The good can't exist without the bad. Helen Keller said it best, "The world is full of suffering, but it is full also of the overcoming of it."]]>

If things had worked out the way I wanted, I would have been Spider-Man by now. Unfortunately, radioactive spiders are to hard come by. Who knew?

Whether you’re 14 or 40, you’ve probably figured out that things don’t always go they way we want. I didn’t get the cool bike I wanted for Christmas when I was eight. I didn’t date the pretty poetess from drama class when I was sixteen. I wanted to have my first novel written by twenty-six. I wanted to be retired by now. Things didn’t work out, but this doesn’t mean I will stop wanting.

It’s good to want things. Buddhism says wanting leads to suffering. Duh. Wanting also brought the world vaccinations and the microchip. The good can’t exist without the bad. Helen Keller said it best, “The world is full of suffering, but it is full also of the overcoming of it.”

So here I am, not deliriously happy about my life, but then not unhappy either. I’m just kinda happy. That kinda happy limbo is where I find many people existing. We got some of the things we wanted, perhaps love, family, a decent job and good friends. Other things we didn’t get like becoming a superhero or a professional ballerina. So is our kinda happy limbo just the balance between the life we have and the life we think we should have?

Let’s step back and talk about having more in our life. I’m not talking about having things. I talking about the intangibles like having more meaningful relationships or having a greater sense of purpose. Having grows from being.

For example, there are people who found great job that fit them. They didn’t walk into a company and ask for a job. They learned skills. They might have gone to school. They developed a level of self-worth as protection in case, a company rejected them. First, they became someone that a company would hire.

It’s the same with friends. Relationships in our lives reflect who we are. Friends are those people who saw something in us that they liked and weren’t repulsed by the things they didn’t like. Levels of friendship are dependent on our willingness to communicate, ability to trust and capacity to connect. Having great friendships requires that we be someone who could have great friends. In order to have more than we have now, we need to be more than we are now.

People who play lotto are a great examples of this. If we want to have wealth in our life, we have to become a person who can be wealthy. That’s why half of all lottery winners lose everything within five years. They never learned to be someone who could have wealth.

That’s also why we’re kinda happy. We’re not kinda happy because of those things we wanted and didn’t get. It’s because of that person we wanted to become and didn’t quite reach yet. This goes back to Ideal Self. Our Ideal Self has that wonderful job and that once in a lifetime love. Our Ideal Self is the possibility of more than who we are now. Kinda happy means were kinda our Ideal Self.

If we stay in kinda happy mode long enough, we become unhappy because who in life plans to be kinda happy. To get from kinda happy to happy, INFPs need to move from kinda our Ideal Self to our Ideal Self. When we grow into our Ideal, we open our lives to new possibilities. It’s in this realm of possibilities where INFPs thrive.

I often hear, people should learn to be happy with who they are now. My response is, what if they suck? Should they be happy with that?

Being happy with the way we are, is the endpoint. We stop looking for the possibilities and opportunities to be more. Every time INFPs close a possibility from ourselves, we wilt a little inside. We can accept the way we are without saying I’m happy to have gotten this far at least and quitting. Accepting means taking responsibility for our current outcomes, the bad and the good.

The moment a person stops blaming things outside themselves—the system is evil, my boyfriend/girlfriend was jerk, it’s my parent’s fault—and takes responsibility, that is a new beginning. It’s the start of possibilities. It’s the start of becoming more. It’s brushing off the dirt from taking our much needed rest at the side of the road and continuing the journey to our Ideal Selves.

It’s okay to be unhappy with who you are now. That’s not a sign of failure. It’s not a sign of immaturity. As long as we take responsibility for our unhappiness, we can act towards making change. No one is ever completely unhappy with who they are, they’re just kinda happy with who they’ve become. Kinda happy doesn’t move you. All great changes a person makes starts because they were unhappy about something.

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