The world is obsessed with happiness but life is more about a larger purpose

Something bigger than yourself, a purpose, a higher goal beyond getting from one day to the next, is critical to our wellbeing

Theodoric Chew: "So stop chasing happiness. Instead, contribute to something bigger than yourself; focus on character development; build meaningful relationships and accept what you can’t control.  This is how you build a life worth living."

The world is obsessed with happiness. The health and wellbeing industry spends billions researching it, creating diet, exercise and sleep regimes to live by and spouting the latest trends. 

Yet all the evidence shows that despite our wealth, our burgeoning sophistication and expanding opportunities globally, over the last two decades, there has been an epidemic of loneliness, mental illness and unhappiness across almost every tranche of society.

How can this be?

Theodoric Chew is co-founder and CEO of Intellect, Asia’s fastest-growing mental health company. Aged 16, he suffered from panic attacks and anxiety, but rather than allowing this to overwhelm him, it inspired his future path and became his 'north star'.

Chew recently outlined his thoughts about happiness on X, suggesting that everything we know about happiness is wrong and that we should look to ancient cultures, who knew what modern psychology forgot.

Chew describes how the answer lies in ancient Greece. Over 2,300 years ago, philosophers made a crucial distinction we’ve forgotten: the Greeks defined pleasure as hedonia (pleasure) and eudaimonia (fulfilment) but modern psychology only focuses on hedonia.

"So stop chasing happiness," Chew wrote. Instead, contribute to something bigger than yourself; focus on character development; build meaningful relationships and accept what you can’t control. This is how you build a life worth living."

Marketer Ryan Holiday in Right Thing, Right Now, expands on the idea that true happiness comes from being part of something bigger than yourself. "It doesn’t matter what it is — the climate crisis, the environment, consumer rights, fighting human trafficking, antipoverty," it just has to be something that is bigger than you alone.

Holiday suggests that we should treat every person we meet as an opportunity for kindness.

It doesn’t matter that we’re tired. That we’re busy. That we were ourselves just treated with unkindness. Respond with kindness. Err on the side of compassion. Do the helpful thing.

Even the smallest kindnesses can make all the difference. We all know that feeling after a difficult day where somebody surprises us with a ‘well done’ or a thank you and it changes our outlook instantly from feeling like throwing in the towel- to thinking maybe you made a difference to someone after all.

In 1945, within months of his liberation from a concentration camp in Nazi Germany, Viktor Frankl sat down to write a book. It took him nine days and its main purpose was to explore the source of his will to survive. The book Man’s Search for Meaning, sold more than 10million copies.

Frankl’s most profound observation was that we can always retain the ability to choose our attitude: "We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts, comforting others, giving away that last piece of bread. They may have been few in number but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms- to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way."

Frankl believed that we find meaning in life in three ways: through work, especially when that work is creative in nature and aligned with a purpose greater than ourselves; through love, which often manifests itself in the service of others; and through suffering, which is fundamental to the human experience.

Notably, earning money and prestige or endlessly pursuing pleasure were not on his list.

A purpose, a higher goal beyond getting from one day to the next, is critical to our wellbeing. 

"The prisoner who had lost his faith in the future- his future was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and become subject to mental and physical decay," wrote Frankl.

Repeating the philosopher Nietzsche's words, he added: "He who has a why to live can bear almost any how." 

Happiness is not about what we own, what people think of us or how much pleasure we can indulge in. It is about having our very own north star.

Holiday expands on the need for a north star that leads us to a meaningful, fulfilling life: "It is an ideal to aspire to, something higher to aim at. Something to reach toward. Something beyond the horizon, lifting our gaze up instead of down. It cuts through the noise. It solves the dilemmas. The weather will change, but the stars do not."

Finding a north star means finding meaning and fulfilment far beyond wealth, prestige or pleasure. It is what makes a difference to you and others. It is that tiny ripple that can expand into an ocean.

Christmas is a good time to set your sights on the north star in your life.

• Dr Catherine Conlon is a public health doctor