By:
Brankica Ljamić, PhD
Master Certified Coach, MCC (ICF)
“What we do and what makes us happy is what sets us apart from each other, while what we have in common and what brings us together is precisely the desire to be happy.”
Despite a rich and colourful life experience, or precisely because of it, the list of things that I feel certain of is rather short. One of the things topping that list, one of the things I am really, really sure of is our very human need for and pursuit of happiness. If there is a subject that keeps coming up in coaching conversations I have with clients – and that includes business coaching – it is our need to be happy.
Our desire for happiness, which we all keep dancing around, brings us together and keeps us apart at the same time, as we use the one word to mean different things. The reason for the difference is very simple: happiness is a noun only superficially, in its essence it is a verb. Doing the things we love to do is what brings us happiness: for some it’s fishing, for others it’s talking to friends, for some a business conquest, for still another a simple family dinner…
This is why, in times like these… not the happiest of times for most of us, let’s say, it might do us good to remember what it was that we always loved to do, and whether any of those things may be done in a closed space, with two conditions: that it be an activity that brings about a change in the pace of breathing, a movement or an activity that is like a game, dance, or song, even tidying up will do… the second condition being that it involves other people – those who are with us, or might be so by virtual means. To shake up our body and shake off our distress, and theirs as well. To change all our minds, make them switch tracks.
All this so we can liven up our house arrest, add some game or exercise, a crepe baking contest perhaps to our newly-established online-coffee-with-friends ritual…So that we can share what we do, to recall how close we are to each other, even when we are away. My friends took to learning the cha-cha-cha together the other day. The fact that they were all on different continents did nothing to stop them: they were all in their pyjamas anyway.
What we do and what makes us happy is what sets us apart from each other, while what we have in common and what brings us together is precisely the desire to be happy
