I have two beloved daughters. Having daddy wrapped around their little fingers means I’ve seen Frozen as many times as Top Gun. And, I’m glad. The movie is character-affirming; it’s cute and witty. Kids fall in love with young Elsa. She seems to have it all – good looks, a promising career as Queen of a thriving country, and more money than most.

But, after her coronation, Elsa is quickly ostracized as people realize she accidentally freezes things when she gets frustrated. She’s different and that pushes people away. Unhappy, she escapes from her royal life into the solitude of a remote ice castle. The rest of the film is a quest against great odds (and the freezing weather) to find Elsa before it’s too late, bring her back into the family, and show her she’s loved. As cartoons go, it’s message on acceptance and putting family first is delightful. But, we should also talk about what the movie teaches about happiness – the authentic kind.

Demi Lovato’s pop rendition of Frozen’s most famous song, Let It Go, echoes the movie’s powerful message that people should find out who they are and then be that person. No need to fake it anymore it to gain acceptance – especially from people who may not have your best interests in mind. Elsa is different and that’s ok. She has a good heart and that should be enough. To be truly happy, she must worry less about others’ expectations and just be herself. The song’s authenticity message goes even further and delves deeper into what it means to break free into a different, happier life. The last verses begin:

And here I stand.
And here I’ll stay.
Standing frozen
In this life I’ve chosen . . .

Like most things in life, there are two different ways to evaluate this message. Each can represent our reality . . . depending upon what we chase.

REALITY #1

Life is tough. Our dreams when we were twelve rarely reflect our current situation. Our jobs aren’t as cool or fun as we imagined. People at work don’t get along and morale could be higher. Our boss stinks sometimes (ok most times). Our career paths are muddy. Our college experience had some really rough spots. Others seemed to work less and get higher grades. Our friendships come and go, but we crave stability. We exercise often, but someone is always fitter, skinnier, or better looking And, our dating life requires an entirely different blog post. But, let’s be clear: our life isn’t awful. We just wake up a bit more discontented than we desire.

A better way to say it is that we often find ourselves frozen, stuck in a life that doesn’t make us all that happy. So, we buckle down and try to fix it – we work harder, run faster, and sleep less. But, all this effort generally proves fruitless. Our results aren’t consistent and certainly not consistently good. The reason is that these things we chase – career success, more money, beauty, popularity, esteem – lack the capacity to make a person truly happy. And we remain frozen. Let me explain.

A Blizzard in North Carolina

I attended law school in North Carolina – a beautiful state that generally experiences mild winters. My first January there, however, saw the largest blizzard ever to pound the state. There must have been two feet of snow over the course of two days. That’s a lot – even for my home state of Colorado. But, for Durham, North Carolina, it was a snowpocalypse. The grocery stores sold out of milk and eggs. Schools closed for a week. The power went out as huge pine tree branches fell on electric lines. The roads were filled with accidents as the cities lacked snow equipment. To put it mildly, everyone was unprepared.

So, people just stayed home. Eventually, my next-door neighbor, Andrew, got cabin-fever. He wanted to make a dent in the storm-recovery and get his family back to normal. I popped my head outside on a chilly morning to see Andrew shoveling his long driveway . . . with a dustpan. A dustpan! Obviously, it was slow going. I walked over and joked that we should probably wait for the sun. Besides, I left my snow shovel in Colorado and didn’t have my dustpan handy. Not that I would have helped anyway using Andrew’s method.

“No way!” he said. “I’m going to get this done. I want to get out of here.”

After an hour or so, Andrew made little progress. It was sort of sad to see, but I admired his dedication. A few hours later, his drive failed him. Andrew threw his dustpan into the middle of his snow-packed driveway and, discouraged, went back inside.

The moral of the story is simple: my neighbor desperately needed a snow blower. His dustpan just didn’t have the capacity to accomplish his goals. Dustpans serve a really useful purpose (imagine picking up a broken glass with a snow blower). But, dustpans aren’t designed to shovel feet of snow. If he wanted to change his circumstances and get back on the road, he needed a tool better suited to the task. Let’s transition from this silly example to our lives and ponder the dustpans we use to try and shovel happiness into our lives:

1. We chase after greater career success, more money. We work really hard in anticipation every raise or promotion. But, as we advance at work, we notice that the happiness we experience is fleeting. There is now another tier to strive after. Hit that and then we will be happier, right? We also meet people with cushy lifestyles and great careers who aren’t all that happy. Their marriages and / or relationships with their kids aren’t as strong as we expected. It appears that their work success didn’t translate into true happiness.
2. We want to be better-looking and in better shape. So, we exercise and eat less. If we stick to it, we become more attractive to be sure. But, that doesn’t seem to make us all that happy. Now, we need to be stronger or skinnier to maintain our happiness level. And, by the way, many of the beautiful people in our lives just don’t seem all that content either.
3. We want to be more popular or respected in our field. So, we do things that make us a bit uncomfortable in order to be liked. We compromise our values at times to fit in. And it works. We gain esteem and, yet, this happiness fades over time too. We also see celebrities and other famous people in the news not looking all that happy with their popularity.

Let me be clear: there is nothing wrong with any of this stuff. Life is a lot better and easier when you have money, are healthy and in shape, and have people who respect you. But, chasing this stuff is equivalent to using a dustpan to shovel tons of snow when it comes to achieving true happiness. Money, good looks, and popularity are not designed to provide happiness and so they don’t. We expect results that this stuff just cannot provide.

The problem is that, instead of realizing that fundamental truth and moving to something else, we just seek more. “Happiness will come with more,” we say. “It’s just around the bend,” we pray. And, the world tells us that more is better and so we continue to put on our blinders and chase. We are indeed frozen in a life we’ve chosen. But, it’s not the life of our dreams. Enter the second way to look at life.

REALITY #2

There is a different and better way to do life. Like Elsa, we can break free from this unfulfilling chase and find the happiness we desire. This new reality requires us to look at the final verses of Let It Go and the overall context of the song:

Standing frozen
In this [new] life I’ve chosen
You won’t find me
The past is all behind me
Buried in the snow

And that, my friends, is great life advice! The goal is to be frozen in a life that actually makes you happy. Leave your past and the chase of fake things behind you. Bury them in my neighbor Andrew’s snowy driveway. You are never going back. So, let me offer a few things to focus on other than career success, money, looks, popularity, or esteem:

1. • Let’s strive to wake up genuinely and consistently happy. Even when we go through hard times, it is possible to wake up happy with our life overall. It really all depends on whether the priorities in our heart line up with the way we live our life. Focus on the desires of your heart first and watch what happens. Shockingly, only 30% of Americans claim that they wake up genuinely and consistently happy. Be one of them!
   • Let’s seek a few – three to five – really good friends. These are people who stick with us, who rush in when others rush out of our lives. Find these people and plug deeply into the relationship. Hang out, listen to each other’s problems, and laugh together. Face-t0-face is the key; text them only when absolutely necessary.
   • And, let’s be character-infused citizens. In other words, people who seek good for their communities as well as themselves, who aren’t hypocritical in the exceptions they take for themselves and deny others, and who embody courage, compassion, honesty, and humility.

Imagine a life filled with this kind of contentment, real friends, and character. This stuff that has the capacity to actually make a person happy, it is our snow blower so to speak. Queen Elsa didn’t change her life, she just looked at it differently. And, in the process, she broke free from her old existence. And you can too! We will get into these concepts more deeply in future posts. But, at least I have you wondering. And, that’s the first step towards wisdom.

– Check out COREYSPEAKS.COM for more on keynote speaker Corey Ciocchetti. Corey has popular keynotes on ethical leadership, morale, stress reduction, and professionalism.

– Check out Corey’s other cool ethics & leadership posts on FORGIVENESS and LEADERSHIP and you won’t regret it.

– Check in with Corey’s ethics blog often to check out new compelling content.