Why Should I Listen To You?
It’s a valid question. Why should you listen to what I have to say? After all, I’m not a happiness researcher myself. I don’t have a PhD in psychology. What could I possibly know about happiness that would help you?
First and foremost, you should listen to me the way you should listen to anyone: with an open mind and an attitude to learn. Listening is a critical skill for any type of learning, including learning to be happier.
The real question I suspect you want answered is “Why should I spend my precious spare time reading your newsletters?” Now that’s an even better, targeted question! :)
The answer lies in the fact that I’m quite ordinary and if I’ve figured out this happiness riddle, so can you. My start in life wasn’t very illustrious. My upbringing was nothing of particular note. I went to a public school, lived in a small town, attended a no-name college1. After college I moved to a big city, took jobs I didn’t like, and suffered losses and disappointments along the way. Most of it was boring stuff.
But the one thing that I had (and still do) was a burning desire to be happy. When I started the journey, I wasn’t even sure what the word “happiness” meant. All I knew was that I was going to search for answers until I could say definitively that I was happy.
My journey took me in many directions and led me to experience both successes and failures with regard to happiness.2 Some of my successes were surprising and some of my failures were as equally surprising. Two notable examples are that owning a million dollar home didn’t make me as happy as I’d hoped it would but singing for dying people at a hospice facility made me much happier than I ever could have imagined.
It is because of my firsthand and often unexpected successes and failures with regard to happiness (which I’ll be sharing with you on this journey) that you should listen to me. If you bring an open mind when listening to my stories, you’ll be able to decide for yourself what will work best for you.
You may be interested in the scientific evidence surrounding happiness and I’ll certainly talk about some of the most intriguing and useful studies I’ve read about. I’ll share my favorite books and resources when it’s appropriate so you can read more on your own, if you wish.
But perhaps the most significant reason that you should listen to me is that I’m going to be brutally honest with you. That million dollar home I just mentioned did bring me joy and I’m not going to lie to you about that. I loved that house and living there was one of the highlights of my life. But I had excellent reasons for leaving that house, which will shed light on my own happiness path. It will be in the hearing of my stories — and, in particular, the nuances of those stories — that you’ll gain insights for your own journey.
In other words, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Listen to me or listen to someone else, but whomever you listen to, find sources of input that can get you on the fast track to happiness. If you don’t have a better idea, sign up for the Primrose Ponderings newsletter. You can always change course later.
The most important thing is to START NOW.
My undergraduate degree is from Clarion University in Clarion, Pennsylvania.
In this context, I’m defining “success” as feeling happy and “failure” as not feeling happy. At times I’ll use a slightly different definition, but for this post, this simple definition works.