The search for happiness is a universal longing. We are created for “happiness” but it eludes most of us. Why is that?
I just finished a live facilitated video course called Journey to Excellence. The virtual host, Father Robert Spitzer, presented the course over 16 weeks. He takes the attendees on a journey that all business executives really need to take to achieve personal and organizational excellence. They not only need to take the class but then live it for the rest of their lives. When they do, it can be a game changer!
Half of the entire course covers personal excellence. The next four classes cover ethical excellence and the last four, organizational excellence.
The Journey to Excellence course challenges the business leader (or the entire leadership team) to make changes within themselves before any positive cultural change can occur within their business. Basically, the leadership must genuinely incorporate the ethos they want reflected in the culture of the entire organization.
What does all this have to do with our search for happiness? Half of the entire course, under the heading of “personal excellence” covers the four levels of happiness. This is a theme that Father Spitzer covers in a lot of his talks and writings. Here’s the Cliff Note version:
In our society, all forms of happiness, whether it’s simply indulging in a candy bar or experiencing something spiritually profound, are often dumped into the same bucket. Father Spitzer does a great job breaking “happiness” into four categories or levels.
Level One Happiness is happiness that satiates the body. Father Spitzer uses examples of eating a big bowl of delicious linguine or driving a Mercedes 500 E-Class with leather upholstery as Level One Happiness. So, Level One Happiness is gratifying one’s own body.
Level Two Happiness is happiness that satiates the ego or mind. The sources of Level Two happiness come from achievement, status, admiration and respect from others. It’s also about winning. Level Two Happiness is gratifying one’s own mind or ego.
I lived in the “OC” (Orange County California) in the mid to late 1980’s. The predominant license plate frame back then defined Level One and Two happiness in the ironic and amusing phrase – “He who dies with the most toys wins.” So, level one and two happiness is about doing and having things that gratify the body and the mind. These levels of happiness aren’t necessarily bad, one certainly needs to eat and to progress professionally, but can become bad if that’s all one lives for because we will never be gratified. Ask St. Augustine about his journey to excellence.
Level Three Happiness is attained by flipping the focus away from ourselves and onto others. It’s attained by helping others, by making a positive difference for others. It comes from trying to make the world a better place for having lived. Many people associate the attributes of a servant leader to those that are needed to attain Level Three Happiness. Level Three Happiness is about serving others.
Level Four Happiness then is the ultimate happiness when we pursue the ultimate good in what Plato called the Transcendentals. We are happy when we seek and find truth, love, goodness, beauty, and being. For Catholics we seek Level Four Happiness in knowing, loving and serving God. Level Four Happiness is serving God.
Like business leaders, organizations can also take this journey to excellence. It may be hard to imagine an organization with a heart but Pope Saint John Paul II’s excellent definition of businesses in Centesimus-Annus #35, as “communities of persons” certainly makes it easier to imagine that an ethos of an organization can be likened to the heart of a person.
A commercial organization may not have to work toward a culture that is based on Level Four happiness and perhaps it can’t because it may be a publicly traded organization, but a faith based non-profit or the management team / administration of a diocese should aspire to do so. Any business culture (that includes a diocese which is a business) based on Level Three happiness liberates the organization from Level Two dysfunctions such as fear-based management, lack of accountability, etc. to one that is productive, creative, flexible and actually fun for it employees to work there. (can you imagine?)
Join us Later This Summer for a Journey to Excellence Discovery Session
I will be co-hosting a free online discovery session with a member of the Magis Center about the Journey to Excellence course later this summer. We plan on hosting this monthly. If you would like updates and details about how to join this discovery session after we hammer out the details please fill out the form below or if you don’t see the form simply follow this link.