Why “just chase your dream” isn’t a strategy for happiness

I made the game “The Pentacle of Happiness” to turn the established ideas about happiness upside down. Or rather, to set them right, because in our civilisation everything has been turned on its head. We live in a global world where the market has long become highly specialised and niche. Business demands narrow specialisation from us — whether in engineering, science or management — and we uncritically carry those work standards over into the whole of the rest of life.

If you want to be happy, we’re told, go after your dream. Push everything else into the background and go after your dream, achieve it at any cost — and then you’ll be happy. Dream, dream, dream. I think that’s nonsense. A dream covers one, at most two areas of a person’s life. Money, fame, self-realisation, six-pack abs, a new car — all of that is certainly good, but it isn’t the whole of life. And while a person, forgetting everything else, marches towards a single set goal, all their other human facets freeze over.

Van Gogh narrowed the world down to his paintings and became one of the most famous artists in the world. Posthumously. And you couldn’t exactly call his life a happy one, could you? Or take the “27 Club” — their music stayed in our hearts and in the history of humankind, but a happy person doesn’t end their life at 27. Just as they don’t die of overwork right there in the office — hello, “karoshi syndrome”.

My father died of a heart attack at 51. He was a respected biker, a loyal friend and comrade to his motorcycle brotherhood. In that sense he fulfilled his cherished dream — he found his people, the ones he felt good with. But Dad was constantly short of time to take care of his health. He didn’t love himself, compensating for it with love for others, and… it didn’t work.

But I don’t want to frighten you: plenty of people manage to live astonishingly long, if unhappy, lives! They even find a peculiar kind of comfort in that constancy. I started my career in banking and saw there an incredible number of no-longer-young people whose lives had frozen in hopelessness and the wait for retirement. I don’t know what idea kept them there, but I myself fled the bank very quickly.

I don’t believe the story of a manic obsession with one idea as a source of happiness. Let Moby Dick sail calmly on the waves. I believe in balance. I believe that if you fill every area of life, then as a reward you’ll get enough time, energy, ideas and self-belief to lead yourself to your own happiness.

The easiest way to understand and feel my idea is in simple game form: compare the strategies of gradual development, hyperfocus and sacrifice, find the one that’s optimal for you, and hold out as long as you can while taking care of yourself. And then do the same with your own life. Good luck!