It Isn't Success You Want: It's Happiness!

By Matthias Poehm

I don't know you. Yet, I know one thing about you: you are NOT happy.
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“Profound happiness” is the ultimate goal of our existence on Earth; it is the goal behind all other goals. When we strive for wealth, a good relationship, a fulfilling job, what we are really looking for is simply profound happiness. And yet we make the mistake of not striving, first and foremost, for profound happiness, for then everything else would fall into place of its own accord.

Each of our lives is directed towards a single objective: The Happiness-Breakthrough

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matthias Poehm
• Release date: Feb 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9783952395011

Matthias Poehm

Matthias Poehm once had a key-experience as an elected staff representative. He failed miserably in front of the entire staff during a meeting with a bright red head and a trembling voice. After that he made his fear of public speaking disappear through years of permanent training with many defeats. Meanwhile he has made a name for himself as one of the most well-known trainers of public speaking and "ready wit". The press calls him "the best public speaking trainer in the German-speaking countries" (Nordwest Zeitung). He is the founder of the Anti PowerPoint Party. Poehm's methods are extraordinary and often go against the common doctrine. He is a rebel, who questions many things, and he says: "I am not interested in established rules, even not my own ones. I don't want to be right - I always want the best results". Due to his analytic gift, Matthias Poehm wrote relevant books on many topics: on ready wit, public speaking, price negotiations, and seduction. Due to a spiritual experience he found a new field that has nothing to do with the improvement of technical communicative skills. It is the topic of purpose, deep happiness, spirituality, enlightenment. Here as well he is a rebel. He says: "Wanting to improve your skills in any area is OK. But that won't render you a happy and fulfilled person. We only can overcome our phantom-life, if we acknowledge that it is there."

Book preview

Why are we in the world?

If you ask people if they’re happy then many will hurl a: Yes, I am happy! at you in a self-consciously firm voice. The happiness they are referring to is a happiness consisting of three meals a day, a secure job, a steady relationship, a few recreational activities, a comfortable apartment, a nice little family, one pleasant vacation trip per year, a nice party now and again, a nice glass of beer in the pedestrian zone in summer and the pleasant family get together at Christmas … That is not the happiness I am talking about in this book. I am talking about a kind of happiness that encompasses your entire being and makes you invulnerable to every external event. I am not talking about the few snapshots of joy that you already call happiness but rather about a fundamental condition of your life. Bliss would actually be a better word for this condition than the worn out word happiness. I am talking about something other than the relative satisfaction that most people out there consider to be the ultimate happiness.

You cannot achieve this profound happiness in this life without having dealt with one question that is fundamental and pervades every area of your life. It is the question as to what life is actually all about? Why are we on this Earth? That is the one question that very few people have asked themselves whilst busying themselves with the development of goals within the framework of accepted convention, which they hope will not disappoint anyone. But everything else is derived from the answer to the question what’s it all about? This book is also concerned with this question, because only then can you go further than you have ever gone before. Only if you take this foundation as the basis for everything you do on Earth will you be able to experience this profound happiness.

If all you are striving for is three meals a day happiness then this book was not written for you. In that case you can confidently put it away.

Suffering

In this book I talk a lot about suffering or sorrow and many of my readers might be thinking: But I don’t experience any suffering.

Under suffering most people only think of things like being ill, suffering a great loss, being sad for some reason or suffering from physical pain.

The condition we have filed away under the word suffering is one in which we feel close to tears. That is only the surface level of suffering; it’s the eruption of the volcano.

The suffering that I mean is that permanent subtle lack of satisfaction with the way things are, that constantly restless companion beneath the surface, that never resting discomfort that simmers beneath the surface.

This suffering is manifest itself in that constant feeling of wanting to achieve something, in never wanting to stop minor and major worries, in those disappointments we experience again and again, in the continuous judging and condemnation of others, in the ongoing uncontrollable stress-thoughts in our minds, … in short, in the absence of the feeling of having arrived.

Observe it when you drive to the supermarket, get out of your car in the parking lot and see all the others with their stony faces - but yours doesn’t look any different to them. Check your thoughts on an occasion like this.

There is no happiness; there is no profound sense of calm; there is no peace.

You are an animal hounded by its own self. And none of your efforts will change that.

That is what I mean by suffering.

Your life is suffering!

The Earth is unhappy

Let me first assure you that you are wrong, if you assume that someone in your social sphere has found happiness, and that you, by chance, have not. It is not correct that anyone in your social circles is happy. Your neighbor is not happy, the successful entrepreneur is not happy, the acclaimed artist is not happy, the devout Christian is not happy, the famous pop-star is not happy - nobody that you come across in the pedestrian zone is happy. The human condition can be described in the following way: there are no human beings, who are more or less happy than you are; there are only people, who are more or less unhappy than you are.

You are surrounded by unhappy people: everywhere! The planet is unhappy,

with very, very, very few exceptions; that is what this book is about.

One’s own death as a mentor

There is one fact that you block out but in the face of which your entire life has to be lived out: your own death. It really exists, it is coming, it is unavoidable. Your physical existence will end with death. Considering life from this point of view leads to the deepest insight.

Most people, if you want to offer them their own death as guideline, cover up their lurking fear by answering something like: "Why do you already want to start thinking about death now? It’s depressing. I want to enjoy life but without worrying." Those that say that are overlooking the fact that, in reality, they are not enjoying their life without worrying. It is exactly the opposite of what they imagine: if they would accept death as the point from which to view their lives then they would finally be able to be free of worries. Here a fundamental error is visible that we have all grown up with: We view death as something bad, something that is to be avoided at all costs.

We are all on a journey. At some point life will come to an end and then we will be spirit beings in another world. From there we will look back at our lives on this Earth in retrospect and will then see, what was really important during our stay here on Earth. And I can already tell you not much of what you now consider to be important will be left over. The 40 years or so, that it will take until then, will soon be over.

This death-based point of view should increasingly become the way you look at everything that happens in your life. Anything that appears to be unimportant from this perspective is also already unimportant NOW.

I once had a customer, the proprietor of a glass company, whom I was preparing for a presentation that was important to him. During this presentation coaching he complained: The managing director at my Cologne subsidiary is dishonest with me. The subsidiary is making a loss. But I can’t simply fire him, because he has so many customer contacts, and I can’t find anyone better right now. It’s stressing me out. Get rid of whatever is causing you stress. I suggested, Just close the subsidiary - you’ve got plenty of others.

No he said aghast, for God’s sake! Do you know how long it takes to set up a subsidiary like that again after a few years and to get it reestablished? That’s impossible!

Here is a thought experiment for you, my dear reader:

Just as with my coaching client you have things that are stressing you right now. Think about something that is occupying you at the moment (please do it now for real!).

Now imagine the last five seconds of your life. Please count backwards from five one second at a time: 5 –… 4 –… 3 – … 2 – … 1 – stop! … Infinite happiness … You are on the other side…

Now look back at your current problem from this point. Was it important from that perspective?

If not then it also wasn’t important now – you needn’t hold on to anything!

When you are a spirit being, do you believe it will have been important to hold on to a Cologne subsidiary?

Everything that occupies us here on Earth suddenly collapses.

That is relaxing and makes you more peaceful and forgiving.

This life is about something completely different from what we all think.

This life is not about success at work, not about a success in a partnership, not about success in terms of health.

Profound happiness is the ultimate goal of our time on Earth. It is the goal at the heart of all other goals. When we want prosperity, a good relationship, a fulfilling job, all we are really searching for is profound happiness. Our mistake however is not striving for profound happiness in the first instance. If we did then everything else would automatically fall into place.

As long as you set yourself the goal of achieving success you will be unable to be free of fear, as the desire for success inevitably generates the fear of failure.

How I used to think

I used to be a person, who was primarily focused on success. There are tons of books and seminars about success in every walk of life. Everyone, who writes about success always mentions other aspects of life in which many should achieve success next to economic success: fitness, health, having goals, social contacts, mental hygiene, relationships, personal development, a fulfilling career and also always that one should not forget to do something good. Not every author mentions it explicitly. But it always shines through as an unspoken message that the combination of all these will result in being happy, i.e. a condition, in which one can accept oneself, and in which the whole world appears to be fine and dandy. I also believed in this philosophy of life and thought it worth striving for. I read a plethora of books about it, attended a load of seminars, and for years I would also keep reading books about esoterica and spirituality.

But the balance was to change dramatically one day due to a specific event. In the course of this book I will say more about this life-changing experience.

The way I used to think was: I had set myself goals as recommended in all the books about being successful: you’ll have a career, you’ll be a successful trainer, even in the USA, you will be a successful womanizer, you will have a lot of friends, reports about you will continuously appear in the media, at some point you’ll be a millionaire, you will be the founder of a charitable organization, you will have a house in the USA, you will have a house in Tuscany, you will work out regularly and have a sculpted and healthy body, you will travel all over the world, you will be a famous, respected person in the society, you will leave a legacy in the world when you die, and you will even remain modest when doing all of that … And when you have achieved all of that, then you will have made it! Then you will be someone.

And when I am eventually this person, respected by everyone in society, then I will be able to feel like the person I always wanted to feel like. People will love you, respect you, honor you and never ever forget you. Every morning you will get out of bed with a smile on your face; everything will seem fine and dandy, you will have no more worries, you will take constant pleasure in what you have, you will have arrived.

Without putting it into so many words I thought that a condition would arise at that point that one could describe as being fulfilled, profoundly satisfied or happy.

But life taught me a different lesson.

The law of attraction

There is one particular law that all books about success refer to and I also came into contact with it.

The very first book, that I wrote was called Nicht auf den Mund gefallen [The Gift of the Gab], a how-to-book about witty repartee. While writing this book, I became curious about the point at which a book like this one would become a success for the publisher. I called my publisher and asked: How many copies of this book need to be sold for you to consider it a success? The publisher answered: In the case of self-help-books we are satisfied, if we sell 3000 copies. If we were to sell 5000 copies then it would extremely successful.

Now during the course of my life, I had often heard about so-called self-fulfilling prophecies, the idea of which is, that you can attract events into your life. You can make things happen by continually thinking about them. If you believe in the deepest recesses of your heart that something will happen, then these thoughts generate a kind of energy that really will attract the event … and you make it come true because, apparently, thoughts create reality. This is the so-called law of attraction.

It is like an iron bar that you constantly rub against a magnet. If you do it long enough and with sufficient intensity, then the iron bar will also become magnetic and will itself attract other bits of metal. It’s the same with constantly recurring thoughts. At some point the thoughts become magnetic and attract events into your life.

Or so the theory goes.

At the time I thought to myself: does that just sound so good or does it really work? I thought why not simply make an offer to fate, carry out a test, and try it out. Not a single book had been sold at that point; it wasn’t even completely written. But I included a prediction within the book about how many copies it would sell. I was a new author and had never written a book before in my entire life. I had no idea about the publishing industry, no idea about marketing books, no idea about sales figures. But I had included a minimum fixed sales figure within the book for all to see before a single book had crossed the shop counter.

Then I bought a Walkman and recorded a full cassette with the constantly repeated message: This book will sell such and such a number of copies, this book will sell such and such a number of copies, this book will sell such and such a number of copies … The Walkman was attached to my belt and I always had ear-phones on while I was writing. Day in day out, week in week out, month in month out, I listened to this message.

In December 2002 I called my publisher and asked for the latest sales figures. And finally! 7,000 more books than I had predicted. Up to that point the book had sold … 107,000 times.

In the meantime I have come to learn, not just based on this example that this law of profound faith works. You can achieve all of your goals in life no matter what they are:

From a job that you want to get to a bad habit that you want to kick to a dream partner that you would like to enter into your life, right up to a luxury apartment on the Cote d’Azur.

The self-help-books will tell you that everything is possible and I tell you that it’s true! If you believe in something then you can also achieve it.

Tips for achieving goals

Let me give you a few tips on goals, success, and the law of attraction from the perspective of the way I used to think.

Your conviction needs to sink into your subconscious

I bombarded my subconscious with the constantly repeated message on the cassette, but that is not the only option.

There is a way of instantly ramming a thought into the deepest recesses of your mind. Concentrate your thoughts completely on the goal; imagine it visibly and linked to emotions. Localize your subconscious. Imagine your subconscious as a tangible, rounded object, for example as a pear. Tell yourself out loud what will count as reality for you in your subconscious from today onwards. At the same time imagine a spear, a battering ram or some other pointed object. Slam this thought into your internal object with all your might on the point of the spear. It penetrates the shell; the spike hits home! Now you have planted a seed that will grow of its own accord from now on. You look after it, fertilize it and observe it. Think about your goal intensively at least three times a day and you’ll see that in the course of time a tree will grow out of the seed that will imperturbably defy all odds in the course of its realization.

It