Profound happiness is considered healthy for us. But, is profound happiness a barrier to self-development? Let’s find out.
Self-development is the key to our existence. It helps us grow, learn, and experience many facets of life that we otherwise ignore. With growing years, we realize the significance of self-development and its effects on our psychology.
For a brief moment, I tried to focus on many things that motivated me to achieve greater awareness that seemed useless to most people. However, they were useful for self-development.
After attaining many experiences and evolving ourselves, we come to terms with the tools we require for creating an ideal persona to route for. Most people learn it through self-reflection and identify ways to make their lives worth living.
But, we do not always focus on self-development when we try to be satisfied with our lives. In other words, the more satisfied we are, the more difficult it becomes to focus on ourselves.
However, that is not the problem anymore as people do not want to be satisfied easily. They want to achieve, claim things, have a go-getter attitude, and do everything that feeds their never-ending hunger.
But, “What if a person achieves a profound state?”
“Maybe profound happiness?”
“How can we deal with something that seemingly makes us satisfied with our current situations?”
To understand the effects of profound happiness on self-development, we must first dive into its very nature and characteristics.
So, let’s find out whether profound happiness is a barrier to self-development.
What is the psychology behind profound happiness?
Now, it’s obvious.
We don’t actually need to understand the psychology behind happiness. Everyone knows it. It is what we care for in the long run. Besides, not every person wants to understand the psychology behind happiness.
However, profound happiness is very different from normal happiness. Normal happiness, which is also known as hedonic happiness, emanates from feelings of pleasure and excitement.
But, the theory of profound happiness is closely related to eudaimonia or eudemonic happiness, which is the eternal happiness we achieve after realizing the meaning and significance of life. As a result, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that our psychology is also closely related to that of eudaimonia.
So, profound happiness is a state of profound or ultimate satisfaction that one achieves beyond a superficial state of happiness. It is largely governed by feelings of contentment concerning the present circumstances.
Besides, it also provides us with motivation, development, and self-assurance. In other words, it is what we need to grow and discover our true potential.
Then, “How does it negatively impact our self-development?”
If it is vital for our growth and vitality, then it doesn’t make sense to call it a barrier to self-development.
Well, this is what we are going to discuss in the next section.
Is Profound Happiness A Barrier To Self Development?
Nobody wants to be limited.
What is a life without living up to your expectations and testing your limits? We are already so obsessed with ourselves that failing to resonate with our true selves doesn’t seem to be an option.
Besides, self-development is such an important factor for our overall personality and healthy self-image. The more we understand it, the easier it will be to develop ourselves.
However, some things might turn out to be a limiting factor in our self-development. Some of them are beneficial to our mental health but might turn out as detrimental to our self-development.
As we have discussed above, profound happiness is one of those limiting factors.
But, “Isn’t profound happiness healthy for our self-development?”
Yes, it is.
As far as it is a short-term plan that doesn’t start right from childhood or teenage. Now, as I discussed above in the first section about my experiences with self-development, I realized that I was too happy with my current state. I did not long for anything beyond my comfort zone.
My unhealthy expectations of living a modest and simple lifestyle prevented me from developing myself. Somewhere, I was too happy to focus on my weaknesses, and even after considering them, I seldom tried to work on improving them.
As a result, I lost a complete year to my profound satisfaction and happiness. It was then that I realized that profound happiness for a longer period at a young age is not good.
So, here are 4 reasons how profound happiness is a barrier to self-development.
Profound happiness
1. Makes us too sophisticated with our achievements:
Achievements symbolize growth and development. They also define our role in life. The way we face things and handle them, everything is represented by our achievement.
It doesn’t even have to be a prize or something invaluable but simple lessons that life teaches us every time we fail in our pursuit. However, things can turn unhealthy when we are too sophisticated to work anymore.
We need to understand the significance of hunger and what it can do to influence our lives for good. Hence, profound happiness is a barrier as it makes us too sophisticated with our achievements.
2. Makes us unwilling to accept change:
Odd but true.
Profound happiness affects our thinking about change and development. To be precise, it does more harm than good by engaging us with boring and mundane reality.
Accepting change is one of the best parts of self-development. Refraining from it leads to a loss of motivation, excitement, and interest. Therefore, we must embrace change in our lives and find ways to use it for self-development.
3. Makes us uncompetitive:
Competition is a part of reality.
Nothing exists beyond competition as we have to force ourselves to deal with tough tasks even to the point of sacrificing our best interests.
At the same time, the competition also enhances self-development and helps an individual rise past his limits to show his true worth. But if we are too satisfied to be competitive, we can never evolve ourselves positively.
Worse, we might end up lonely and misunderstood for our easy-going nature. Hence, we must never lose our competitive spirit and find out ways to self-development through competition.
4. Neglects the significance of experiencing pain:
No pain, no gain.
Experiencing hardships and shortcomings is a part of self-development. One doesn’t simply walk towards the limelight to discover great success in his path. It takes years of hard work to finally create a successful personality.
But, profound happiness comes with profound satisfaction. This profound satisfaction neglects the significance of experiencing pain and hardships. Due to its tendency towards self conservation, it lets us escape from any kind of suffering or sadness vital to self-development.
As a result, we neglect the importance of experiencing wounds and hurts to finally be able to heal ourselves through self-development.
Final Words:
To sum up, profound happiness is good for us. Most importantly, it helps us live our lives with enthusiasm and excitement. However, if it sustains for a long period, it affects our self-development, and we remain bound under the effects of illusionary happiness.
It must also be noted that profound happiness is a temporary barrier and can be removed if we come out of the effects of profound satisfaction to get back to achieve another great feat.