Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winner and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, posits that “Happiness is being happy in your life, and life satisfaction is being happy about your life.”

He, and many others in the know, consistently mention that, having goals and direction in life is essential for life satisfaction, and that is what seems to be so clearly lacking for many young people we’ve known who seem rather lost after graduating from college.

Like many parents, although we could have handed our kids everything, we encouraged them to develop not only their passions, but also helped them discover a clear path to their goals.
(Example–Both of Larry Ellison’s kids have great careers, in fact, my wife has worked on film projects with his daughter, who is a producer.)

We also encouraged them to work on their lives as if they had no safety net to fall back on, and I think that cultivating all of these elements made a huge difference in the level of success/satisfaction/happiness they experienced right out of college.

Everyone is different, but the proof for us has come in the form of how well our kids lives turned out, so we’re very grateful our plan seems to have worked.