‘The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.’ This is a quote from the late psychologist Carl Rogers. He also went on to say ‘This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-hearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one’s potentialities. It involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life. Yet the deeply exciting thing about human beings is that when the individual is inwardly free, he chooses as the good life this process of becoming.’
This is a description of when people are at their best, living their lives to their full potential, doing things that they find meaningful and purposeful, feeling pleasure and joy in their activities, and engaged in rewarding and intimate relationships.
But how often have we heard the adage that happiness is a direction, not a destination—a process and not an outcome? I have heard it many times and spent a career studying happiness to know that it is true. Yet, I look back on my life and I can see that for much of it, I was living it as if what I was doing today was only valuable for what it would bring tomorrow.
Happiness is not something that happens to us, it is not something external to us that we find along the way; it is about how we engage with our existence and the stance we take towards life. Until we learn that, happiness will always be elusive.
I think we have the wisdom inside ourselves to know this. Carl Rogers in his book ‘On Becoming a Person,’ observed a general tendency for clients in therapy to change in ten directions, which I think provides the clues we can look for in our own lives to understand where we are in the process of becoming.
First, people move in a direction that is away from facades. No longer willing to put on a metaphorical mask, people become more willing to be open about who they are, what they think, and how they are feeling.
Second, no longer driven by oughts, people begin to live life as they see it rather than how they have been instructed by others about how they ought to be.
Third, no longer willing to do what others expect of them, people move away from living a life driven by the expectations of others.
Fourth, no longer willing to spend their days pleasing others, people begin doing what pleases them.
Fifth, people move towards self-direction. They begin to choose their own paths in life and their own goals.
Sixth, people become aware that they are not fixed in who they are, but that life is an ever-changing adventure, where things change in new and exciting ways, and where one is always learning.
Seventh, people’s eyes are opened to the complexities of the world and of themselves as part of it. No longer content with the old certainties, people begin to embrace the richness of life.
Eighth, people move towards openness to experience, seeking to learn and to change and to enjoy the challenges ahead.
Ninth, as people become more open to themselves, they become more open to others. They become more accepting of other people.
Finally, people become more trusting of themselves, daring to feel their own feelings and to trust their own sense of themselves and their uniqueness in the world.
How many of these ten directions sound like a good description of how you are living your life at the moment? If this sounds like you, then you are living life as a process, you are creating the freedom for yourself to move in any direction.
References
This is adapted from my book Think Like a Therapist: Six Life-Changing Insights for Leading a Good Life