Important Components of Happiness Essay

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Perseverance Is the Key to Happiness and Success

People in today's culture are experiencing tremendous challenges because we live in a fast-paced world. Throughout all endeavors, everyone desires to be successful and happy in spite of challenges. Due to the desire to be successful, individuals have become preoccupied with family, school and work as they struggle to maintain balance. While some remain focused and achieve success and happiness across their pursuits, others give up because of discouragements and never achieve their goals. This begs the question, "what is the key to success and happiness in life?" As evident in the lives of those who achieve their goals, perseverance not only breeds success but also generates happiness. Without perseverance, an individual cannot become successful or happy because he/she will lack the necessary values and courage required to thrive in the midst of challenges.

Garbriele Muccino illustrates the significance of perseverance in achieving happiness and success in the movie, The Pursuit of Happiness. The main character in this movie, Chris Gardner, is a struggling on and off-salesman that eventually turns into a stockbroker in order to take care of his 5-year-old son. While Gardner spent all his money to buy an extremely expensive franchise for selling bone scanner, his wife, Linda, worked at a laundry and is seemingly bored with her life, which made her leave Gardner and move to New York City. Gardner is now forced to work hard to take care of his son, Christopher, as he seeks to become successful in his endeavors and pursuits. Gardner turns into a stockbroker when he met a man with a luxury Ferrari at a time when he and his son were forced to live in a church with other people. His decision to become a stockbroker was a life-changing professional endeavor that culminated in his employment in a Dean Witter firm. This eventually becomes his path to success since Gardner later founded an investment firm in 1987 known as Gardner Rich. One of the most important lessons that people can learn from Gardner's experience is that perseverance pays and is the key to success and happiness. Throughout his journey in the film, Gardner was determined to be successful and demonstrated perseverance even when odds were against him. While he was faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges, Gardner overcome them through perseverance and eventually became successful and happy.

Ryan M Niemiec and Danny Wedding demonstrate why perseverance results in success and happiness in their book, Positive Psychology at the Movies. They argue that perseverance is a deliberate continuation of a goal-centered action regardless of emerging and existing difficulties, challenges, and hindrances. In this book, perseverance entails effort and duration through which people relentlessly work hard towards achieving goals they have established for themselves. Perseverance also generates success and happiness by incorporating wisdom since working hard on any task does not necessarily bring success and happiness as compared to working hard to realize a clearly defined goal or objective. The authors analyze different characters in selected films or movies and conclude that perseverance is strongly associated with psychological concepts of resilience, grit, and hardiness (Niemiec & Wedding, p.96). The most important lessons from this book regarding perseverance in relation to success is that wisdom, hard work, clear definition of goals, and resilience are the keys to success and happiness. It is not just enough to work hard but it's more important to work towards clearly defined goals with resilience and grit.

Angela L. Duckworth together with other researchers illustrate that perseverance is more valuable than intellectual talent and conscientiousness in the study named, Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals. In this article, the researchers state that the significance of intellectual capabilities and talent in realizing success across all professional domains is well established. The examined the importance of grit or perseverance as a non-cognitive factor that contributes to success and happiness. Their study demonstrated that grit, which they defined as passion and perseverance for long-term objectives, did not link positively to intelligent quotient but was strongly associated with Big Five Conscientiousness. They concluded that realization of long-term goals not only involves talent but also entails perseverance and focused application of talent over time. Therefore, the most important lesson readers can learn from this scholarly article is that talent is not a substitute for perseverance but complements it. Regardless of how talented an individual is, his/her ability to become successful and happy is also influenced by his/her level of perseverance. This implies that perseverance generates more benefits that exceed intellectual capabilities and conscientiousness.

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In a publication by the Washington Post, Grit: The Key Ingredient to your kids' Success, Judy Holland illustrates that perseverance requires finding passion. She states that we are not a gritty generation since people are easily protected from failure, which makes them become overwhelmed. However, grit determines who will succeed in different places in life, particularly in the pursuit of long-term goals. The article also states that talent is of little value unless it's combined with passion, hard work, and perseverance. Therefore, parents should focus on developing gritty children rather than kids who easily quit in the midst of difficulties and challenges. The most vital lesson for readers of this article is that talent accounts for nothing unless it's combined with perseverance. People should be involved in activities and practices that help them develop perseverance since it's the key to success and happiness.

Efrain Viscarolasaga published an article on Boston Business Journal named, Focus, Perseverance Pay off for Exec, in which he examined the life of Bill Andrews. Andrews' mantra in life is never give up, which has made him successful in all previous start-up companies that he has started in New England area. Andrews' success is also attributable to his focus and consistent eye on a single goal or plan since his experience has taught him that developing new directions or changing focus has contributed to the failure of many startups. As he focuses on establishing a new start-up company, Andrews states that he believes in focus on a solid plan coupled by resilience in order to achieve success. According to Andrews, the ability to become a market leader is an attainable goal that is realized as long as the organization remains focused and resilient on its solid plan.

Synthesis of Arguments from the Articles

As evident in the above summary, each of these articles provides significant insights regarding the key concepts related to perseverance based on its contribution to success and happiness. From these articles, it is increasingly clear that perseverance is a crucial factor in achieving success and happiness, especially when an individual focuses on a solid and clearly defined goal or objective. One of the most important lessons from these articles is that they all demonstrate that perseverance is more valuable than talent. These articles seemingly concur that even though talent is important, it accounts for nothing unless it's combined with perseverance. In the movie, The Pursuit of Happiness, Gardner eventually became successful and started his own investment firm not because he was talented in this field but because of his resilience throughout all experiences and pursuits.

Holland supports this argument by arguing that, " ... being talented is of little value unless you pair it with hard work and passion" (par, 3). Therefore, the full value of talent is evident when it is effectively combined with passion and hard work towards realizing a clearly defined and established goal. Holland's arguments regarding the significance of perseverance over talent are supported by Duckworth and her group of researchers. Duckworth et al. point out that, "grit nonetheless demonstrated incremental predictive validity of success measures over and beyond IQ and conscientiousness" (p.1087). On this premise, it is not only important for people to be talented and develop their intellectual capabilities but they should also develop perseverance when pursuing long-term goals. These arguments imply that talent combined with perseverance equals success and happiness.

Secondly, these articles demonstrate that perseverance is a by-product of hard work and effort over a period of time. In the movie, Gardner states that, "The world is your oyster. It's up to you to find the pearls." (dir. Muccino). This quote implies that while opportunities may be readily available, the ability for one to be successful is dependent on his/her hard work and resilience. Niemiec & Wedding seemingly support this argument by stating, "Persistent people work hard to achieve their goals, and they persist in these efforts until they achieve the goals they have set for themselves" (p.96). In essence, hard work is a key concept of perseverance in relation to success and happiness since resilience cannot exist without effort.

The third important component of perseverance in relation to success and happiness is focus on a solid long-term goal. These articles concur that a clearly established goal or plan is important in perseverance since all efforts and hard work focus on a specific goal. Niemiec & Wedding argued that successful perseverance entails wisdom to work at a specific….....

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