13/01/2025
Your Daily Nugget: The Raw Truth About Happiness and Living Well
In 2024, I’ve felt like I was standing on the edge of burnout.
I’ve cried more times than in any previous year.
I’ve dug deeper into psychotherapy than ever before.
And yet—this has been the most successful year of my 21 years as an entrepreneur.
How?
My latest company, Mentor of Men, is less than three years old.
And already, the journey I’ve been on with this work has shown me that authenticity and success are inseparable.
By allowing pain into my life, and more importantly, allowing myself to fully experience it, I’m actually feeling better than ever.
That’s what brought me to this reflection:
Living a good life isn’t about chasing happiness.
It’s about living well.
Here’s the thing: especially for men, we’ve been taught that negative emotions—sadness, fear, shame, anger—are a problem to be solved, hidden, or numbed.
And we associate them with weakness, and acknowledging them with being unmanly.
And so we push them down and drown them out.
Some do it with work, throwing themselves into long hours, thinking productivity will make them worthy.
Others turn to drinking, working out, drugs, TV binging, or even violence to feel powerful again.
Anything to avoid feeling 'weak'.
But what happens when you avoid those 'crappy' emotions?
They don’t go away.
They fester.
They leak out in destructive ways: broken relationships, toxic behaviors, self-sabotage.
Therefor, happiness isn’t my goal. I consider happiness to be a possible outcome of living with purpose, intention, and integrity.
The problem with making happiness the goal is that it’s too narrow. And on top of that, it's fleeting.
It demands we feel one specific way.
All the time.
And when we don’t feel like that, or when we lose it, we feel like failures.
This attachment to happiness, this fixation on one outcome,
blinds us to the value of everything else we experience.
It creates rejection. Rejection of our struggles, our efforts,
and ultimately, rejection of ourselves.
But while we’re at it, let’s get rid of the concept of self-love too.
We beat ourselves up for not loving ourselves enough,
as if self-criticism isn’t also a part of being human.
What if, instead of striving to “love” ourselves all the time,
we strive to be caring and kind to ourselves?
Especially when we’re struggling with our own image,
when the mirror feels like an enemy.
Let’s aim for grace, not perfection.
So instead of chasing happiness or perfect self-love, strive to live well.
Do the things you know are good for you.
Lean into the discomfort. Face the challenges. Accept the setbacks.
And let yourself experience life fully by embracing not only joy, gratitude, grief and love, but also sadness, anger, and grief.
Because living fully isn’t about avoiding the bad.
It’s about embracing all of life—raw, real, and unfiltered.
Ironically, when we stop chasing happiness,
it often shows up as a byproduct of a life well-lived.
Not because we forced it, but because we earned it.
Happiness comes and goes.
But a life lived with depth, authenticity, and courage?
That’s where real meaning is found.
In service of the betterment of men,
Erik
Mentor of Men
📷 Gabriela Hengeveld
