The Benefits Of Being Genuinely Happy For Others
Clap for everyone who’s crushing it, even if you’re not where you want to be yourself
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Have you ever seen someone succeed and felt immense joy for them?
The person may have failed repeatedly, then almost miraculously, achieved massive success. For instance, a child learning to ride a bike, failing, then getting it right for the first time.
Or Tiger Woods winning the Masters after countless personal and professional failures.
It’s sometimes a feeling we don’t understand. A degree of selflessness we did not know we were capable of. But it’s something we should embrace and let out as often as possible. The more we clap for others, the better it is for us.
There’s a Pali/Sanskrit word called “mudita” which translates to “sympathetic joy” or “vicarious joy.”
Mudita means being genuinely happy for someone else’s good fortune or success.
It’s different from being proud of someone (as there’s some degree of selfishness baked in there). This is pure joy from seeing someone finally succeed.
(It’s funny that there’s no English equivalent for this word, yet there’s one for its antonym: envy.)
This is a difficult state to achieve consistently. It may even take some deliberate practice. For goal-oriented people like us, we tend to question what we’re doing with our lives when we see someone else crushing it.
It becomes more difficult to understand when we know we’re better, smarter, or stronger than the successful person.
But the more we question the success of others, the further away we end up from our own success. One simple change of mindset can help us in several ways.
It’s not a zero-sum game
When we turn on that faucet of happiness for others, we see more and more persons achieving their versions of success. And for someone trying to reach a goal, this is a great mindset to be in.
You don’t see that others are being successful, but you’re not. You see that success is not a zero-sum game. One person’s success does not mean there’s less of the pie left…
