Let's start with some facts just to set the table.
Happiness is relative. You experience it, define it, and seek it differently than anyone else. Just because one thing makes someone happy doesn’t mean it will make you happy.
Golf is a good illustration. A lot of people find golf brings them happiness, while others find it boring, frustrating, and difficult. Ask someone why golf makes them happy, and the answers are broad. Some will express that being outside makes them happy. Others spending unfettered time with friends. Others love the competition, others the challenge, while others use golf to get away from something that makes them unhappy. They are all right in their own individual ways and those ways are nearly infinite, which makes defining happiness and discussing how to find happiness so difficult and nuanced.
Just think about the advice we hear about finding happiness and how generic and impersonal it feels. “Find happiness around us” by keeping a grateful outlook. Unhelpful. “Find happiness in the little things”. I can’t find them they’re so little. “Find happiness in yourself,” and, “Find happiness within.” How? If I knew how to do that, I would have done it by now.
These are the facts and they are undisputed.
Here’s the grain of salt.
While the ways to define and find happiness are nearly infinite and entirely individualistic, there is a thread of consistency that may help you find your brand and definition of happiness. I didn’t make them up, but they are reinforced by experts who study the science behind happiness. Finding common themes is a huge undertaking with such wide opportunity, but they will *hopefully* help guide you to find your happiness.
Alright no more fluff. Let’s get into them.
The three principles of happiness (with an anecdotal 4th at the end) are:
Know who you are.
Find your community.
Pursue your purpose.
Upon reading these ‘secrets’ to happiness, you may be feeling, like i did, underwhelmed. And yes, yes it is. We have expectations of what seeking happiness should look like. It should be awe-inspiring and happy, but primarily not something we’re already doing.
“But I already know who I am.” “But I already have friends.” “But I already have a job” “I’m already doing all these things and somehow not feeling as happy as I think I should.”
This is exactly why this is where we need to start, because happiness has no expectation. In fact, the judgement and comparison that construct our expectations actually detract from our happiness by shifting our mindset from that of gratitude to that of scarcity. But it’s worth asking, if you have all of these things; knowing who you are, a community that supports you, and are pushing a purpose; then why aren’t you happy? Could it be that these things may not be quite where you want or need them to be?
We have to leave the expectations we carry about how we will feel, how our life will be different, and especially what material items we will have behind. In our world, it is easy to fall into the comparison game. But that game is rigged against us. How happy could you possibly be playing a game you can never win and never find fulfillment from? Get off the mouse wheel from the start.
Now that we’ve touched on our thinking about happiness, lets get to the practical steps we can take to expand our happiness.
As we say in our post about where to start to self improvement, whenever possible we want to learn from the experts. The ones who have actually done what we’re trying to do and accomplish what we want to accomplish, so with each of these principles, we provide some relevant resources we have utilized and recommend. Check them out.
KNOW WHO YOU ARE
Knowing who you are is more than knowing your name and where you came from. It’s about recognizing your strengths, acknowledging your faults, and having a clear vision of who you want to be. This takes some work, sometimes uncomfortable work. But in order to know what will make us happy, we need to know who we are. If you’re someone who loves the smell of freshly cut grass, golf may be good for you. If you’re allergic to grass, it may not bring you joy.
Think about your principles. In other words, what is the code or set of rules with which you see the world and live your life? We all have some sort of compass that tells us both where we are and where we want to go. Think about who you want to be and describe that person in terms of their code, recognizing that anything different from where you currently are is an opportunity for you to work to better yourself.
There is no greater or more concise description of principles for life than Admiral William H. McRaven’s Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...and Maybe The World. Now this is not a set of principles that fits everyone, but it is a good way to think about who you are at your core, and the actions you want to take to become the person you’ve identified. Look beneath the surface and try to understand, not what the principle is, but how the principle was developed and why. If you emulate the same method, you’ll end up with a similar list of principles that reflect you.
Once you’ve got a grasp of your principles, it helps to understand your role and power in developing the life you want. You Are A Badass by Jen Sincero is both a poignant kick in the pants to take responsibility, and a delightfully light and practical manual about how to take ownership. This book will help you recognize your greatness, that we all have within us, and take steps to stop making excuses and self sabotaging. She has written several iterations of this book that can be bought as a set or individually, but we have only reviewed the original and You are a Badass at Making Money. You Are a Badass Collection
Exploring and knowing who you are helps you build self-confidence, which is the strength and power to let yourself be happy. Confidence enables you to welcome happiness as a journey rather than a destination, and it's the grace that allows us to admit our faults aren’t problems, but opportunities.
FIND YOUR COMMUNITY
We are social creatures. We are not made to be isolated. There is something intrinsic about having people around us, that we connect with, that support us, that we live beside that fosters happiness by facilitating a sense of belonging. It is that sense of belonging that provides a sense of security and acceptance that builds happiness. In terms of progress, the people we surround ourselves with are one of the greatest indicators of our success and happiness. If we’re constantly hanging out with people who complain about their dead end jobs, what are the odds we also have a dead end job? Probably pretty high. So in order to facilitate our own happiness, we have to ensure the people around us also facilitate our happiness and growth. Join a group that shares your joy for activities, or that you think you can learn from. Tiger Woods probably hangs out with a lot of golfers, but do you think his son hanging out with pro golfers is going to make him better at the game? Abso-fucking-lutely.
Though the original is a bit dated, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie remains one of the best and most comprehensive resources for interacting with others, and has been updated. Whether it's in the classroom, the board room, or the bedroom, Carnegie provides practical advice to get people on your side. Though some of the application’s are dated, the themes very much remain relevant today.
Being a part of a group is not sufficient for community. We have to connect with our community on several levels. We need intellectual, emotional, spiritual and physical stimulation, all of which our community can play a role. But connectedness within our community is where the roots of happiness with our communities grow. Imagine having a best friend who knew very little more about you than the information on your drivers license. You would’t feel that close to them would you. That’s because it takes vulnerability and intimacy to cultivate closeness. No one does a better job of describing the power of connection than Berné Brown does in
Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone. Brown goes into her research into relationships and provides incredible insight into what makes our communities so special and why they fuel us. Use these lessons to push your existing communities to grow and to find new ones that fill your needs.
We also recommend Daring Greatly, which is about building courage through the counterintuitive action of expanding vulnerability.
FIND YOUR PURPOSE
Once we know who we are and have cultivated our community, pursuing a purpose is fundamentally linked to happiness. Notice that this theme is not about achieving but rather pursuing. Happiness is drawn from pursuing the things in life that make our destinies vibrate and our dreams come alive even if they don’t actually materialize. It’s the journey toward our ideal rather than achieving it, because every time we achieve a goal, we are ready for another. But pursuing an ideal is a constant process that provides joy rather than a destination that ends.
To illustrate this, we recommend The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. It is short, easy to read, and surprisingly simple, yet deeply resonates with all of us. It’s a story about a Shepard who wants to create a better life for himself. When you read it, understand the basics of the story, but also digest the meanings behind the story and think about how this could apply to your life. The number of people who cite this book as changing their life is in the millions, this author among them.
When you get through The Alchemist and you’re feeling inspired, you may be very excited but lack the practical steps to implement what you feel.
That’ll happen when reading a novel. But for those who want the practical steps in black and white there’s Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live, by Martha Beck. This is a practical guide for identifying and pushing your passion and purpose. Don’t skip the lessons and interactive tasks. They will at worst be illustrative and at best shine a spotlight on your path forward.
But remember, it’s the journey that nurtures happiness, so focus on the journey that will help you feel most fulfilled, empowered, and closest to your true self.
While we recognize that these three principles are in themselves complete for helping you find happiness, we wanted to add one more as a sort-of footnote recognizing the role of finances in our happiness.
We strongly believe that money is not a source of happiness. All over the world there are happy people with wide ranges of wealth, so neither having money, nor having none, in itself can make you happy.
However, we also recognize that money does facilitate a level of security that is necessary for happiness, and that in many cultures that lack of money does detract and distract from finding happiness. Money does have a role on our happiness, and we recognize that leaving money out of a discussion about happiness would be incomplete.
Happiness comes from understanding and accepting yourself, surrounding yourself with a community, and pursuing something bigger than yourself. Anyone can do this, so why don’t you?!