Why I'm Choosing Happiness Before Success

a post by Will Aylward for the Tiny Buddha blog


“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” ~Alan Watts

I love how instant modern life has become.

When I’m hungry, without really moving, I can instantly get food delivered to me. Pizza, of course. When I’m hungry for knowledge, at the touch of a button on my mobile, I can discover answers to the questions I’m pondering. No need to head to the library to search for and flick through books.

Some would argue that this instantaneousness is making us lazy. Regardless, I find it astonishing the speed we can get what we want.

Why, then, have I found myself delaying the one thing I want most—happiness?

Like many of us, I’m driven. I love to challenge myself, set goals, and do my best to achieve them.

There’s nothing wrong with being ambitious. It’s only a problem when I tell myself “I won’t be happy until… happens” or “I won’t be happy until I have…”

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How I Stopped Chasing Happiness and Started Enjoying My Imperfect Life

a post by Mai Pham for the Tiny Buddha blog


“I want to live my life without stress and worries. I don’t need to be rich or famous. I just want to be happy.” ~Unknown

Have you ever set a goal and then become obsessed with it, making it the center of your life and arranging everything else around it? Did you think that only after you achieved your goal would you be totally relaxed and happy?

I’ve done this many times before.

Throughout my life, I’ve measured my happiness by my achievements. I pushed to get good grades in school, then focused on going to a good college, then getting a high-paying job.

However, even after getting all of those things, I was not happy. After attaining them, they felt ordinary, not as extraordinary as I thought they were.

The feeling of achievement was not that awesome after all.

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I have added my own comments about this elusive “thing” called happiness several times in the past. I truly believe that there are very few times in life that I rate as “happy” at the time. It's in the looking back that you see the happiness of the guests at the wedding party and you forget the stress of all the organisation. TWICE for me and then once for my younger daughter but there are lots of other occasions I am sure you can recall when you the lousy sandwiches on the train dominated your thoughts and not the brilliant event you went to -- until afterwards. It is truly not something to be chased.

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Social mobility or social reproduction? A case study of the attainment patterns of students according to their social background and ethnicity

an article by Matthew Collins (Lichfield Cathedral School, Staffordshire, UK), Gemma Collins (University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, UK) and Graham Butt (Oxford Brookes University, UK) published in Educational Review Volume 67 Issue 2 (April 2015)

Abstract

This paper explores levels of achievement amongst boys who attended a selective school in Birmingham, UK through consideration of their attainment, social background and ethnicity.

It seeks to answer three main questions.

Firstly, to what extent does academic attainment vary between students from different socio-economic groups and ethnic backgrounds?

Secondly, what are the possible reasons for these variations?

Thirdly, what can selective schools do to close the gaps in attainment between these groups?

The research study sought to determine whether different groups of boys in the case study school experienced social mobility, or social reproduction, as a consequence of the education they received.

Using quantitative data of student attainment (n = 625), combined with information on their residential location, areas of comparatively low achievement across the city of Birmingham were mapped. Spatial data for levels of deprivation and ethnicity were also considered. The resulting map identifies areas of high vulnerability (HV) to poor performance, specifically by identifying the postcodes of neighbourhoods containing students who are most likely to underachieve.

Qualitative data was gathered amongst students (n = 121) who were embarking on their General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) studies. All were asked to identify factors that might affect their academic performance. These findings were then cross-referenced with the postcode study to help analyse possible reasons for underachievement.

The main finding of this research was that the study school experiences a distance-decay effect in relation to examination success. Boys from Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) groups generally performed worse than White British (WB) boys, while students from deprived areas of the city were also less likely to succeed. Students from poorer communities tend to live in environments of relatively low aspiration, although one inner city area was identified as anomalous with regard to the achievements of its students.

We conclude that social reproduction, rather than social mobility, is occurring within the case study school and suggest a range of initiatives to raise the levels of achievement of those who are most socially disadvantaged.

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“Feeling” hierarchy: The pathway from subjective social status to achievement

an article by Mesmin Destin, Scott Richman and Jelani Mandara (Northwestern University, Evanston, USA) and Fatima Varner (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA) published in Journal of Adolescence Volume 35 Issue 6 (December 2012)

Abstract

The current study tested a psychosocial mediation model of the association between subjective social status (SSS) and academic achievement for youth.

The sample included 430 high school students from diverse racial/ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. Those who perceived themselves to be at higher social status levels had higher GPAs.

As predicted by the model, most of the relationship was mediated by emotional distress and study skills and habits. The lower SSS students had more depressive symptoms, which led to less effective studying and lower GPA.

The model held across different racial/ethnic groups, was tested against alternative models, and results remained stable controlling for objective socio-economic status. Implications for identity-based intervention are discussed.

Figures and tables from this article

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Whose failure? Learning from the financial collapse of a social enterprise in 'Steeltown'

an article by Duncan Scott (affiliation(s) not known) and Simon Teasdale (Third Sector Research Centre, University of Birmingham) published in Voluntary Sector Review Volume 3 Number 2 (July 2012)

Abstract

The social enterprise literature is dominated by stories of good practice and heroic achievement. Failure has not been widely researched.

The limited policy and practice literature presents failure as the flipside of good practice. Explanations for failure are almost wholly individualistic, and related to poor governance. However, organisational studies literature shows that failure cannot be understood without reference to the wider environment within which organisations operate.

This article is based on a nine-year in-depth case study of an organisation previously characterised in the policy and practitioner literature as an example of good practice and heroic achievement. We seek to explain its “failure” through studying the interaction between the organisation and its wider environment. We show that simple individualistic explanations are not sufficient by which to understand social enterprise failure and outline the implications for academic understanding of social enterprise.

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Adolescent Occupational Aspirations: Test of Gottfredson’s Theory of Circumscription and Compromise

an article by Daria B. Cochran, Eugene W. Wang, Sarah J. Stevenson, Leah E. Johnson and Charles Crews published in Career Development Quarterly Volume 59 Number 5 (September 2011)

Abstract

The authors investigated the relationship between adolescent occupational aspirations and midlife career success. The model for adolescent occupational aspirations was derived from Gottfredson's (1981) theory of circumscription and compromise.

The authors hypothesised that parental socioeconomic status (SES), ability, and gender predict adolescent occupational aspirations and influence career achievement in later life. Gottfredson's model was a good fit for the data. SES and ability influenced the formation of occupational aspirations, and ability and gender predicted career achievement in later life.

Additionally, occupational aspirations predicted career achievement in later life. Adolescent girls achieved less career success in midlife than did adolescent boys.

Hazel’s comment:
Interesting. Particularly as it comes fairly close, for me, from reading about abused children having a more difficult time in higher education.
Seems to me that we are what our childhoods make us although we can buck this with determination and understanding.

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Expanding notions of social reproduction: …

Grandparents’ educational attainment and grandchildren’s cognitive skills

an article by Jason L Ferguson (University of California, Berkeley, USA) and Douglas D Ready (Teachers College, Columbia University, New York) published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly Volume 26 Issue 2 (2nd Quarter 2011)

Abstract

Inherited privilege and status remain powerful factors in the distribution of opportunity in American life. These transfers of socioeconomic resources across generations are facilitated by the links between adult educational attainment and children’s cognitive skills. Our current study expands the notion of social reproduction beyond this narrow two-generation approach to investigate the links between grandparents’ educational attainment and their grandchildren’s academic abilities. Using a nationally representative sample of over 13,000 children who participated in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), we find that familial advantages in human capital persist over time and that these advantages are associated with improved cognitive outcomes among later generations. Even after controlling for a wide array of socio-economic and demographic characteristics, young children with college-educated grandparents possess stronger literacy and mathematics skills at the start of formal schooling. Propensity score approaches, which address concerns regarding the endogeneity inherent in the topic, yield similar results, suggesting the robustness of our findings.

Research highlights


Young children with college-educated grandparents have stronger literacy and math skills at the start of school than children with grandparents with less education, even after controlling for parent education and other demographic factors.

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