Success – that seductive mistress after whom everyone (well, almost
everyone) runs – is a parameter by which society measures the worth of
individuals. Success is thought of as the panacea of all ills afflicting
us. We think success is the missing piece in life’s jigsaw puzzle and
putting this piece in place will reveal a bright and a beautiful image
and we will live happily ever after! Everywhere we go we find people
eulogizing success. There are numerous books written on how to be
successful. Before a kid turns 5 he/she is already going to ‘tuitions’;
there are CAT coaching centers all over India to help aspirants clear
the exam; there are hundreds of cricket academies who promise to churn
out the next ‘Tendulkar’. If society has a god, it has to be success.
Joy, on the other hand, is an often ignored cousin
of success. You don’t find that many books written on how to experience
joy, how to be happy. You won’t find any cricket academy which teaches
kids just to enjoy playing cricket and in the process score runs. You
won’t find any coaching center which talks about the joy derived while
solving a problem. Joy is thought of as something which will eventually follow success. Get hold of success and you will find joy.
Geet Sethi – 7 time world billiards champion – and
Sunil Agarwal try to find the distinction between success and joy in
this remarkably insightful book ‘Success Vs Joy’. In
the book, written as a first person account by Sethi, Sethi draws from
his experiences on and off the billiards table to persuasively argue
that it is in the pursuit of joy that one finds the maximum
satisfaction. Success, according to him, is a social concept and its
interpretation is very much dependent on what the society thinks. If you
go after success it will lead you into doing things which the society expects from you, not what you
really want. Joy, on the other hand, is internal. Joy is not something
which happens at the end of a process, unlike success. Rather, joy is
the process itself.
The addiction of Joy
Geet Sethi talks about the concept of sweet spot in ball sports like golf and billiards. In
golf when the ball is hit with the club, sometimes it flies a long way
away not with the force applied but with the perfect alignment of the
body, rhythm and timing. Such a
perfect connection of the club with the ball is called the sweet spot.
Most of us who have played cricket can relate to it when on occasions we
might have hit the ball without much force but it still would race away
to the boundary due to the alignment of the body, the weight transfer
and the angle at which the bat meets the ball. That moment when the ball hits the bat, that sweet spot, is addictive. Though
in ball sports the sweet spot is literal, a figurative sweet-spot is
available in all professions. A writer may hit the sweet-spot if he
finds just the right combination of words to express exactly what he has
in mind. A software programmer may hit the sweet spot when he chances
upon a simple, elegant yet an intuitive algorithm to solve a complex
problem. This joy experienced with hitting the sweet spot gives the
maximum amount of satisfaction and is extremely addictive.
The corruption of Joy
So when a person gets so much joy in hitting the
sweet spot why does he shun it? Why doesn’t he go after the sweet spot
again and again to experience the joy? As per Sethi, this is because all
of us fall prey to society’s expectation; all of us run behind money
and fame; all of us try to be successful.
It is in the pursuit of success that we forget about the sweet spot. As
Geet Sethi writes, "I have learned that when I wanted success and was
willing to sacrifice joy for it, I eventually got neither".
Apart from the pursuit of success there are many
other distractions which prevent a person from experiencing joy. These
include problems with spouse/family members, temptations from
surroundings and playing to the ‘gallery’, among others.
Further in the book Geet Sethi gives tips on how to
overcome the problems that lead to the corruption of joy. He stresses
on the importance of concentration and single-minded focus on the job at
hand and in the process experience joy.
The book has a unique format in that it is divided
into 80 chapters with each chapter not more than 2 pages long. I felt
the book was a little disorganized as the ideas presented in the book
sometimes ended abruptly in a chapter and made reappearances a few
chapters later. However, my key takeaway from the book is that the meaning of life is in finding our own sweet spot.
The path is not easy as there are numerous distractions which pull our
mind in all directions, but if one has a single minded focus on the job
at hand these distractions will go away and we will succeed in our
objective of experiencing joy.
