A few years ago, I met with two new patients who were scheduled for initial diagnostic evaluations on the same day. It so happened that they were at the extreme ends of the intellectual spectrum: One was a bona fide genius (imported from Europe to participate in a cutting-edge project at a local university). The other suffered from a congenital disorder with secondary extreme intellectual disability. The striking thing was that the genius was doing painfully poorly in her pursuit of happiness, and the intellectually disabled patient was doing remarkably well at it.
Meeting these two individuals back-to-back brought into focus for me an interesting aspect of the pursuit of happiness: It takes place on a level playing field. Any attribute one might think would be advantageous — intelligence, education, physical ability — turns out to make no difference, with one possible exception: temperament. Individuals appear to differ innately in emotional reactivity and in how readily they recover from adversity — differences that are largely heritable and relatively stable across a lifetime (Kagan, 1994; Lykken & Tellegen, 1996). Temperament, however, sets a tendency, not a ceiling — as discussed in the introduction to the Practice Section, innate temperament is the equivalent of innate talent: important, but not determinative.
As my clinical encounter demonstrated, a genius can do poorly in the pursuit of happiness; an intellectually disabled person can do very well at it. The same applies to wealth. Research suggests that once survival needs are secured — once a person has the financial means for shelter, safety, food, and clothing — money is not a predictive variable in the pursuit of happiness (Kahneman & Deaton, 2010). This remains an active area of research, but common experience is suggestive — most of us know someone wealthy who’s doing poorly in the pursuit of happiness and someone poor who’s doing very well at it.
This raises a question: Why don’t these factors matter? What neutralizes the impact that differences in intelligence, wealth, education, occupation, physical ability, and social position could have on the pursuit of happiness?
Based on my professional and personal experience, the answer appears to be the following: The efficacy of one’s pursuit of happiness is determined by how close one gets to doing one’s best. The key is that ‘best’ is a personal best — not anyone else’s but one’s own.
The factor that levels the field in the pursuit of happiness is that each of us faces an identical demand: to do our personal best in all that we do. The ‘product’ generated by a genius at their personal best is likely to be more impressive than the product generated by an intellectually disabled individual at their best, but subjectively, the challenge to do the best they can do is identical.
Doing the best one can do all the time may well be an unattainable goal (consistent with the definition of happiness as an imaginable, but unattainable, state). But the pursuit of happiness is not a binary, all-or-nothing proposition; it’s on a continuum. It follows that the closer one gets to doing one’s best — at any given moment and cumulatively over time — the more rewarding and satisfying one’s pursuit of happiness becomes.
Personal best means doing the best one can with one’s unique set of strengths and weaknesses, thus optimizing one’s influence on the pursuit of happiness. Whether someone else could do better is irrelevant. The pursuit of happiness is neither comparative nor competitive. (It is, however, collaborative — we’re all in it together.)
The idea of ‘doing one’s best’ may seem vague and abstract, offering little practical utility. However, close examination reveals its applicability and relevance to the pursuit of happiness.
Throughout our lives, we move in and out of various roles. For example, earlier today (it’s a Sunday), I was in my family role; presently, I’m in my writer role; later, I’ll be in the role of a friend or neighbor; tomorrow, I’ll spend many hours in my psychiatrist role. In each of these roles, there is a performance level that represents the best I can do — my aspiration is to get as close as I can to that personal best.
To a runner, there is a speed or distance that represents their best. To a weightlifter, there is a weight that represents their best. To a student, there is the best they can do in terms of time spent studying, content mastered, and ultimately, GPA achieved.
It can be difficult, even impossible, to determine definitively what that ‘best’ is. Even when the ‘best’ is measurable, it is not a fixed point; it fluctuates over time. Practically, it doesn’t matter, because the requirement is for a commitment — an ongoing aspiration to approximate one’s best, rather than to nail it. It is more important to ask the question “Did I do the best I could have done?” honestly than it is to answer it accurately. (Interestingly, it’s often easier to recognize when one’s performance falls short of one’s best than to define that best precisely.)
Given that doing one’s best translates into an effective pursuit of happiness, it is reasonable to ask why we don’t do so automatically, all the time. In part, the reason is the habitual assumption that we are doing our best. It is an easy habit to develop, and, thankfully, it can be replaced relatively easily with the better habit of actually checking. That’s where regularly asking the question above: “Did I do the best I could have done?” comes into play. This simple self-reflection can be revealing and ultimately contribute significantly to the efficacy of the pursuit of happiness, as long as it is approached seriously, calmly, and sincerely.
When we realize we stopped short of doing our best, it raises a follow-up question: Why? Correctly identifying what prevented us from doing our best is crucial if we are to do better moving forward.
Answering the seemingly open-ended question “Why did I not do the best I could have done?” is easier than it may appear to be, because the answer falls into one (or more) of the following three categories: Inattentiveness (failing to pay sufficient attention to one’s choice-making process), Ideological Attachment (allowing a rigid belief or assumption to override better judgment), and Intoxication (any state that involves a reversible impairment of one’s choice-making process). These categories and their strategic management are discussed in detail in the Practice of Doing the Best I Can Do chapter.
The best one can do is precisely that — no more and no less, which is what the optimal pursuit of happiness requires. Life always makes sense; it doesn’t play jokes, and it doesn’t include paradoxes (as discussed in the Axioms chapter). A requirement to do better than one’s best is paradoxical and therefore would not be imposed by life.
If participation in a process requires doing better than one’s best, then participation simply will not happen. When the best a gazelle can do falls short of outrunning its predators, before long, its continued participation in the process of life will be terminated. Or, a less dramatic example: Since playing in an NBA game requires a far better game than the best game I could offer, I will never participate in an NBA game.
Sustained participation in a process is evidence that one’s best is good enough for that process. If you are participating in the process of pursuing happiness, your best is good enough. Since the pursuit of happiness will never require doing better than the best you can do, success is, at least theoretically, possible (where success means moving in the right direction, not arriving at the desired destination).
Life always makes sense; people, not so much. Consequently, people commonly demand from themselves (or from others) to do better than their best. Such a demand is irrational and costly. Overshooting a target is missing it just the same as undershooting it. Doing more is not the same as doing better. For example, when moving heavy weights — for exercise or necessity — there is a point that marks one’s personal best. It may be feasible to go beyond this point, to move more weight than one’s best. However, this risks injury, which, when it happens, negates the value of the extra weight moved.
Life never demands doing better than one’s best, and it does not ignore doing less than one’s best. Both pushing oneself to do more than one’s best and allowing oneself to stop short of doing one’s best come with a price. The cost of missing the target of doing one’s best may be veiled or too small to notice, but it’s always there. Hence, the mindful pursuit of happiness is founded on the aspiration to do no more and no less than the best one can do.
It should be stated clearly that doing your best does not guarantee you will get what you want. The efficacy of the pursuit of happiness, at any moment, is determined by the interplay of two forces: human influence — exerted through the choices we make and the quality of their implementation, and the universe’s influence (sometimes referred to as ‘shit happens’), which is not only beyond control but, in its complete form, it’s beyond human comprehension. Since the universe never ceases to exert its incalculable influence, doing your best optimizes your part, but it’s just a part — insufficient to guarantee a desired outcome.
There is, however, a guaranteed reward for the commitment to do your best. It is not as sweet as getting what you want, but it is something: The guaranteed reward for doing your best is freedom from wondering what your life would have been like had you done your best.
Athletes commonly illustrate this principle in post-game interviews. Win or lose, it is common to hear an athlete emphasize the importance of knowing they did their best, e.g., “we didn’t leave anything on the court,” or “I gave it my 100%.” Without consciously realizing it, making such statements points to the reward built into doing their best, independent of the competition’s outcome. Conversely, (although it rarely comes up in post-game interviews), an athlete who knows they didn’t do their best, and lost, is likely to be burdened by wondering how things could have turned out had they given full effort.
In general, wondering about how things could have been can become obsessive — it can be difficult to stop and can feel like a mental trap. Freedom from such gnawing, ruminative thinking is the guaranteed reward for doing one’s best. It may not seem like much, but as all forms of freedom go, it is precious.
Lastly, I remind you that doing the best you can do is not an all-or-nothing proposition. It’s on a continuum: The closer and the more often you get to doing your best, the more rewarding your pursuit of happiness will become — more than enough incentive for a strong commitment to doing your best.
(This chapter is complementary to the Practice of Doing the Best I Can Do chapter in the Practice section, which you may want to read next.)
REFERENCES
Kagan, J. (1994). Galen’s prophecy: Temperament in human nature. Basic Books.
Kahneman, D., & Deaton, A. (2010). High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(38), 16489–16493. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1011492107
Lykken, D., & Tellegen, A. (1996). Happiness is a stochastic phenomenon. Psychological Science, 7(3), 186–189. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1996.tb00355.x
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