Carla DiBello On Happiness, Instant Gratification and Following Your Joy Radar
Entrepreneur and celebrity style insider Carla Dibello on the importance of achieving true joy as defined by you and only you
Last week, a photo from a year ago popped up on my phone. I was on location, scouting for an upcoming short-film project in the heart of Saudi Arabia. Instantly, I could remember the golden glisten of the sun, the cooling air, the exhaustion of a long day well spent. It had been over eight hours of scouting, nonstop. I remember desperately wanting a shower and a good night’s sleep. I also remember the electrifying thrill of the challenge, of taking on uncharted territory, and of allowing my gut to lead the rest of me. Curious, I swiped back through my phone, finding a photo from two years prior to that. I landed on an image of a relatively normal photo taken at some event or another. I was dressed up, smiling, and having a nice time – but even years later, I could instantly recall the heaviness of that period in my life. It had been a good night, but I remember feeling somewhat listless, unsettled.
A year isn’t a long time in the grand scheme of things, but it’s enough to put space between us and the feedback loops that make everything in our lives feel so unbearably permanent. It’s enough to get out of the short-sightedness of a moment – to be able to take some deep breaths, and to look at things from a new angle, this time with a fresh perspective and a little extra distance. It’s funny, but I’ve always appreciated this bizarrely prolific feature on iPhone photos for that exact reason. Whenever a photo pops up, it’s a reminder that there was a moment in time when I thought things would never change. But the thing is, for good or bad, they always do.
Looking back three years ago, it’s so clear to me that I had fallen into the rut of following a prescribed formula for happiness. I had, for a moment, lost ownership of my own happiness. That’s not at all to say that I was totally lost. I think it’s important to point out that even the most well-adjusted people can fall out of calibration every so often.
I can’t quite recall the exact phrasing, but I remember Oprah, or someone equally impressive, saying something along the lines of how important it is for us to follow our happiness – or joy radar – or, in other words, tap into our gut to understand what truly brings us joy, free of outside influences or distractions. Instant gratification is an interesting phenomenon – Freud’s reference to ‘the pleasure principle’ is based on the idea that our ‘id’ is driven by instant gratification – and when we don’t get it, we can often have feelings of anxiety or stress. It’s why so many of us take the easy road, even when it doesn’t exactly bring us true, fulfilling happiness.
I think a lot of us get instant gratification confused with true joy, myself included at times. It’s difficult to keep clear when the world is so insistent on defining our happiness for us. But real joy often means having to actively separate oneself from what the popular narrative is in order to determine what is truly meant for us. In the book Think Like a Monk, Jay Shetty writes, “The more we define ourselves in relation to the people around us, the more lost we are.” This goes for all definitions of concepts, from success to joy, and everything in between.
And after having lived multiple lives, had multiple kinds of success and my fair share of challenges, I can confirm with absolute certainty that we can never feel truly happy or successful until we can be honest with ourselves about what those words mean to us – and us alone.
PHOTOGRAPHY: EFRAIM EVIDOR. STYLING: NOUR BOU EZZ. HAIR AND MAKE-UP: LA LOGE. WITH THANKS TO SLS DUBAI HOTEL. BLAZER, DHS1,129; TROUSERS, DHS781, BOTH IRIS & INK AT THE OUTNET