NEWSLETTER ARTICLES 2025

Featuring author Matthew Hussey, and tennis superstar Emma Raducanu!

Kids are often encouraged to dream big, chase your dreams because you can do anything. Adults are often reminded not to lose sight of their own dreams, but far too many of us are chasing a definition of success being sold to us by society, that often only leads to stress, anxiety, lack of happiness, a sense of unfulfillment, and even illness. No-one seems to be teaching us HOW to chase our dreams and chase success in a healthy way.

Here's a simple way to look at it, inspired by Matthew Hussey's book 'Love Life'. 

You can be a 'happy enough' type, or a 'never enough' type. 

The 'never enough' person is someone who is always striving for more, more money, more power, more status, more victories, more success, and some of these people end up being INCREDIBLY successful, but they rarely ever become satisfied with what they have, no matter how well they do. On the face of it, what's so wrong with that? Why would you want to settle for 'happy enough' when you could be pushing yourself to achieve more?

You can do both, and here's the explanation, quoted directly from 'Love Life':

Happy enough isn't accepting less, it's a philosophy rooted in gratitude and acceptance. This moment, this life, this body, this mind, this is enough for me to be happy. I may choose to try for more, because more might be fun, it might add comfort to my life, it might add new experiences, it might add new connections, but I am not putting myself through it from a place of lack, but from a place of calm. It's amazing how much this allows you to attempt more, because all of a sudden, you have nothing to lose. If the thing we are trying to get doesn't happen, we haven't risked or lost our happiness by not getting it. When we think of someone with nothing to lose, we often think of it in a negative sense, as in, someone who has nothing. But when we are happy enough, we have nothing to lose because we can look at our life today and recognise that it is already enough.

With this reality, someone can feel that it would be awesome to become the best tennis player they can be, to find a perfect partner, to have a happy and successful child, but the absence of such things doesn't prevent us from being happy enough to enjoy the life we have today right now. Being happy enough gives us personal power, not from a defensive or cynical place, but from having agency in our own happiness, that coexists with an openness to the endless possibilities that life has to offer.

Emma Raducanu appears to be slowly working this out. After her 1st round win a few days ago at the Australian Open, she said 'I feel like I'm not necessarily trying to prove anything, I'm just doing it for myself. I'm a lot more comfortable with myself which helps. I've come to the realisation that I enjoy going to practice, and doing all my sessions, and feeling really satisfied with the work that I put in'. She went on 'Maybe in the past I've been very high and so very down if I've lost, but now I'm not necessarily just playing for the result. My goal this year, it's not to be too high or too low. It's great to win this first match for a few months, but I just want to look at it, celebrate it for what it is, and just kind of move on. That's going to be the same when I lose a match this year. It's not going to be a disaster either'. Now that sounds pretty healthy to me. She's basically not giving her tennis results power over her emotions and wellbeing, and that's a big part of what it's all about. 

Deeper levels of happiness cannot come from success, or other people, or objects or money. Neither do we have full control over those things, so why would we give them power over our emotions, well-being and happiness? 

If you want to chase your dreams, then first take stock of everything that makes your life truly great as things stand today. People, things, and circumstances are fine to include, but doing this exercise from the perspective of gratitude and acceptance will provide the richest and most meaningful clarity for how wonderful and amazing your life is right now. Use this to build a platform, and chase your dreams from that platform, and you can never lose, and can never fail.

To conclude, don't ever be scared to chase your dreams, but also don't ever give your dreams the power to make you sad, angry, anxious, or to lower your self-esteem or self-worth. Good luck!