How To Lead A Happy Life
August 19, 2007
(Photo by Swamibu)
We’ve heard it so many times before, ‘life is tough’. There are so many things that we want; an understanding and supportive lover or spouse, that wonderful house you saw last week, a carefree, stress-free life style, a fulfilling career… the list goes on.
Even though there are some many things that you want to accomplish, you don’t have enough time, so little money, so little that you can afford, limited energy. There’s just not enough to accomplish what you want… How do you ever get to live a life of happiness?
Indeed, it’s not easy, we all know that. Nonetheless, Happiness can be yours; it is possible, really. The modern society presents a lot of ‘noise’ and distractions in your life, which are diverting your focus and attention; detrimental to your pursue of happiness. What you need first is to gain a keen awareness of what constitutes and contributes to a happy life.
To this end, I like to talk about 4 key areas which contribute to happiness. I will explain why I believe they are the 4 key areas and why you should pay attention to them. Lastly, I will end with how these areas need to be balanced to contribute to your happiness.
This new awareness will be like an awakening that allows you to see through the fog of life, and filter out unnecessary pursues; thereby getting you onto a true journey of happiness
Why is this awareness important? In order to be happy, you first need to be aware of what makes you happy, don’t you? Have you really thought about what things make you happy and unhappy? If you are NOT very, very clear about this, then you may just be striving for superficial remedies or quick-fixes, which does not contribute to sustainable or lasting happiness. You don’t want to find yourself chasing the wrong dreams and ending up with a lot of heartaches and disappointments, do you?
The 4 Areas Of Happiness
One good place to start looking for happiness is to look at the things in daily lives that gives you strong positive and negative emotions.
Starting today, develop a conscious awareness of strong positive emotions like joy, peace, pride, and satisfaction. At the same time, look out for negative emotions like your complaints, worries, anger, sources of stress. Make a mental note down what’s causing these strong emotions.
Through my daily observations, experiences in my life, and with people around me, I observe that happiness (or unhappiness) essentially revolves around 4 key areas:
- Health and Fitness Concerns
- Financial and Physical Security
- Family, Love and Relationships
- Mental and Spiritual Concerns
Do your strong feelings fall into one of the above areas? Let me give you some examples as illustrations. There’s a good chance some of your concerns sound like one of these:
Health and Fitness Concerns
- “I hope I never get cancer. It’s so much pain; seeing my mother going through chemotherapy…”
- “Honey, do I look fat??”
- ”My obesity is making me feel so tired and lethargy all the time”
- ”It was a great game with the kids today!”
Financial Security
- “Son, we can’t afford to buy that sports car?! You think I’m Warren Buffet?”
- “Darling, I’m so happy that we’ve finally bought our own house…”
- “Oh, not the bills again…”
Family, Love and Relationships
- “He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not…”
- “Kevin is such a jerk! He’s always making condescending comments about me…”
- “Jane and I are the best of friends. It’s like we know what each other is thinking about, without talking about it…”
- “Honey, I am worried about our son. His teacher just called today about his results…”
Mental and Spiritual Concerns
- “Why doesn’t my manager give me the recognition for all the effort that I’ve done??!”
- “I feel so guilty about lying to him…”
- “We must win and beat the competitions…”
- “It’s so meaningful to help these poor kids…”
The list is not exhaustive, but I hope you see the point. In each of these cases, we can see that the person-in-concern is either happy or unhappy; also we can trace the source of (un)happiness back to one of the 4 Key Areas of Happiness.
These 4 key areas are timeless, they’re enduring. Why? Because it’s human traits, it’s our basic nature to seek satisfaction or fulfillment in these 4 areas. Only when these 4 areas are satisfied can there be sustainable happiness.
Let’s start looking at the first one.
Health and fitness is one of the most basic criteria towards a happy life. You need to be healthy to fully appreciate and benefit from any wealth that you earn, the love and good relationships in your life, or to be able to pursue any meaningful endeavor at all.
Now don’t confuse poor health with being handicapped. There are many good examples of handicapped people who lead life that are far more fulfilling than normal people do. What I am talking about are people who are unfortunate enough to be stricken with diseases and pain. Just think of cancer patients going through chemotherapy, dozens of pills and medication for those with high-blood pressure, or the daily injections required for those with diabetics, and you’ll know what I talking about.
Years ago, my aunt was stricken with a very rare form of muscular dysfunction disease, which causes her muscles to degenerate slowly over time. Before being diagnosed with this disease, my aunt was a very successful career woman, a highly valued General Manager in the company she was working for then. Probably due to her professional commitments, she neglected her diet and lifestyle, which is believed to have contributed to this disease.
Within months, I witnessed her degeneration from a beautiful, confident woman into a shrunken, deformed shell; confined to her bed, and always needing someone to attend to her, including basic functions like bathing and going to the toilet. In her final days, she was constantly in pain, and was begging for relief. It was heart-wrenching. She finally found her relieve as her vital organs failed and collapsed. She was only 44.
In sharing this story, I hope to show you that money, or career achievements are meaningless if you don’t have the health (or life) to enjoy it. Good health is the prerequisite to any other areas of happiness. Yet ironically, health is often the area that is taken for granted. Just look at the junk food, high-profile anorexics and rising obesity rates in our societies, and you’ll probably agree with me.
It’s actually not difficult to maintain good health and fitness; you simply need to mind your diet and to eat healthily.
For me, it has become a habit for me to go to the gym or run at least 3 times a week. I have been doing this for years already, and this is certainly paying off in my life as I am always free to pursue other areas of success, without being burden by pain or bad health.
Last year, I completed a 42km marathon run. This was the first time in my life completing such a distance. Even though I did it in 5 hours (which is well below the average of 4 hours), it was already an achievement for me; talk to me five year ago, and I would tell you 10km is too long to run, let alone dream of completing a 42km marathon.
I am not telling you this to show off my accomplishment, but I want to illustrate the point that if an average Joe like me can do this, so can you! When I first started, I didn’t aspire to train myself into anything like Superman or Ironman. I was just doing minor workouts and frequent leisure runs to improve my physical fitness. After a couple of years, my results accumulated and I noticed that I am now fitter than most average people.
Don’t take too big a goal at first, but target small successes. Exercises can be fun and enjoyable. Start by going at a pace that you can do relaxingly, and as your fitness improves, increase your training level accordingly.
In terms of diet, I cut down on junk, fatty food, and drink (alcohol) moderately. I’m don’t deprive myself of my favorite chocolate or fast food, only that I take them in moderation, maybe once or twice a week. The point is I do not indulge, just enough to satisfy my cravings. I do not smoke as well, so that’s not a problem.
The benefits of a healthy body go beyond physical aspects. A healthy body enables a healthy mind; I find myself in a clearer frame of mind after a good run, which allows me to be more alert, focus and effective during the day.
A strong and fit body leads to a heightened sense of well-being and confidence, and I feel good in clothes. I like to wear sleeveless t-shirts the day after a good gym workout, when my muscles are aching a little. The aching makes me feel highly aware of my body; I feel like my muscles are bulging (even though they really aren’t), and feeling very fit and confident. Whether I really look good or not aside, but it’s important that I am feeling good about myself.
So my friend, if you want to lead a happy life, start from taking care of your health (if you are not already doing so). This can be done by looking after your lifestyle, your diet. It’s not difficult, you just need a little conviction, some little small efforts, some small successes, and understand that it’s important before your health fails you and it’s too late.
The second key to happiness is a stable financial status which give you freedom to do what you truly desire to with your life.
We all want money, don’t we? I certainly can do with more money for all the items on my wish list! Money can get you the things that you want; money can provide security for you and your family. It is required to put bread on the table.
I am assuming that if you are reading this (having a computer, internet access and all…), then you have some basic level of income which is enough to provide for meals and a roof to sleep under. Chances are you wish to earn more, to have more money, to buy better things. You may think that having more money means more happiness.
Although I certainly agree that getting what I desire can make me happy for a while, I don’t believe this is a sustainable long-term strategy. When it comes to money and happiness, I believe that simplicity is best. What I mean is to live within my means and not to overstretch myself by spending beyond what I can afford to.
Firstly, be prudent in your usage of credit. Do not fall prey to those nice low down-payment installment plans. Sure, it’s a great feeling to carry away that nice 40-inch LCD HD TV without paying a single cent, or drive home that sports car by paying only $3000 cash as down payment; but it won’t be a nice feeling when the bills come at the end for each month negating your monthly pay packet. For that one moment of instant gratification, you are burdened with months/years of debt repayments plus interest. Do you realize that you are actually making someone else richer with all those interest payments? All for that one moment of gratification?
Let’s say a 40-inch LCD HD TV is selling at retail price of $3399. If you take up a 48 month installment plan, you only need to pay $113 per month! That’s quite a deal, isn’t it?
No, wait, wait, wait, let’s do our Maths… At $113 per month for 48 months (or 4 years), you actually end up paying $5424 in total. That’s $2029 (60% in interest) above the retail price!
Imagine happily bringing home that LCD TV for “free”. You hang it up on the wall, and appreciate the sleek black contours, the sharp colors and hi-definition pictures. You enjoy it for the next one week. You proudly show it off to your friends and neighbors on the second week. Then enjoy the football matches on the 3rd week. Then the 4th week comes, your bill comes for the first $113.00.
By the 3rd month, after the excitement of the new LCD TV fades away, the monthly bills of $113 continues to come in. Month after month, after month, for 4 years!
Now, let’s take this one step further. You went to the car showroom and saw your dream car. It’ll cost you $50,000. Based on a 7 years installment plan at 7% per annum, that breaks down to about $637.00 per month (I’m only using simple interest for illustration).
And then you have a mortgage loan which requires you to pay another $1000.00 per month.
Add these together, and you have a monthly debt payment of $1750 ($113 + $637 + $1000). If you are employed and taking home $3500 per month (which is not considered low), this means more than 50% of your monthly income is already committed to debtors!
This concept applies for any form of credit payment including credit card, personal line of credit. As long as you are enjoying the goods & services first, paying later plus interest, you run the risk of running into compounding debts, which binds you down with vice-like grip.
When you are heavily loaded with debts, it is hard to be happy. Not only are you helping someone else’s money to grow by paying interest, you are greatly limiting your freedom to make free choices in life about work and career.
Let’s say you have a very unreasonable boss at work, or that the working hours demanded on you is way beyond your acceptable level, and is badly affecting your work-life balance (which isn’t uncommon). You want to bail out; you want to move on to a less demanding job, but maybe with much lesser salary. However, you can’t, because you have debts and loans to service!
So what do you do? You make do; you continue with the lousy job, because you need it. You drag yourself to work everyday, you argue with your boss, with people at work. You hate your job, but you can’t move on. Can you be happy like this? Do you see the repercussions on your happiness, when money is not managed well?
I have been through this credit trap before and I watched my monthly salary get sucked out by debtors before I can even count them. I also have friends who went into bankruptcy on escalating debts due to compounding interest which simply became untenable.
Nowadays, I try to stay debt-free. I never buy anything on installment with interest. I make sure I buy things at the cheapest value (retail price). If I cannot afford the retail price, I will suppress my desire for instant gratification, and save up till I can buy it.
I still use credit cards for purchases, but I always make sure that I pay off the balance at the end of each month. I never allow the bank or credit card company to earn a single cent of interest from me, because I don’t like to pay more than I should.
I am glad to say that I am almost debt-free (less my mortgage), and that I have enough savings and investments put away which allows me to fire my boss anytime (should I choose to), without running into basic livelihood issues. This freedom is uplifting, as it frees me to focus on performing well at work; I can truly do and say things which I believe is good for the company, even when it may be things that my boss doesn’t like to hear.
So my friend, to be happy, you need to manage your money carefully and develop the right mentality about money. Otherwise you may just end up having your life been managed by money instead; become a slave to money without realizing it.
My recommendation is to firstly become debt-free, the freedom you will achieve is very motivating to take things further. Depending on your level on income, you can adjust your spending to suit your situation and desires. However, make it a point to save and invest a portion of what you earn to increase your net worth over time. In this way, you can make your money work for you and leverage on compounding interest to your advantage instead. The greater your net worth is, the greater your freedom.
The best thing about money is not the luxuries or goodies it can buy for you, but it is the freedom that it affords you to do the things you want to do.
So live simply, have lots of freedom and be happy.
Family, Love and Relationships
Another key to happiness is constructive, mutually supportive relationships with people in your life.
Now depending on your current situation in life, you may be single looking for a lover, married with a spouse, with or without children. Regardless of the situation or what you are looking for in terms of relationships, the issues surrounding family, love, friends and colleagues are the same; it’s concerning people.
We want to be loved and appreciated; we want someone who understands and supports us. We want a happy family. We want friends who understand, are supportive and will be there for us in times of need. We want colleagues who are not demanding, not selfish, and perhaps even fun to work with.
But it is so hard; people are hard to get along with. People don’t do as you want them to, they don’t listen; they don’t understand you, blah…blah…blah….
Remember this point; it’s really important because it is life changing:
The way that people act towards you is actually a reaction to what you do.
Simply said, however people are treating you or acting towards you today, it’s caused by you, whether you know it or not, like it or not, it is directly and indirectly caused by what you do or did!
I know, some of you are going to disagree with me immediately; you want to cry foul.
- “I didn’t ask for my boss to put me down all the time. She doesn’t trust me.”
- “I didn’t ask for my spouse to argue with me all the time. He/she is always disagreeing with me.”
- “I didn’t cause my mom to nag at me at the time. I just need some peace for myself.”
- “I didn’t cause my colleagues to bad mouth me. They really hate me.”
Yes, you are right. You certainly did not ask for these unfair and lousy treatments from people; well, at least not directly.
Let me explain. People treat you differently based on how they perceive you. This is often working at the sub-conscious level, and the people themselves may not be fully aware of it. So depending on how you treat other people, how you present and carry yourself, others will react to you and treat you accordingly.
Let’s take an example to illustrate my point. In my professional work, I have always made it a point to keep to my promises. If I said that I will deliver something by a certain date/time, I will always make a conscious effort to deliver as promised. Even when I am not able to do so due to unforeseen circumstances, I will inform the concerned party and explain my difficulties. Over time, I noticed that people have a tendency to trust me for what I say, especially on deliverables. I have through my consistent actions, build up a reputation of credibility, which makes it easier for people to trust me.
Another example; I am pretty much an introvert and prefers to keep to myself. For the same reason, I had difficulties carrying a conversation with strangers. Due to this difficulty, when in social settings that require small talks, I will often freeze and don’t know what to say. As the silence gets uneasy for the group, I notice that people tends keep away from me, or to avoid eye contact with me and engage those who are more “open to conversation”. At first, this made me feel very bad; I felt as if people are keeping away from me, ostracizing me. And the more negative I felt about myself, the more inwards I drew myself.
Luckily, I took some advices from my wife, who is a very “people-oriented” person. She taught me how to start a conversation and how I can make myself appear more approachable by smiling and maintaining confident eye contact with people. I tried it out, and was pleasantly surprised to find that people are engaging me in conversations. My open demeanor and smiles helps break the ice and make it easy for people to approach me.
So, coming back to your relationships. If that is any area that you wish to improve, instead of putting the blame on the other party, or other people, look inwards at yourself and ask what is it that you can do to influence the person and bring about the quality relationship that you desire.
- If your boss does not trust you or value you highly, ask yourself how you can increase your credibility and value add so that she can trust you or value you highly
- If you think your spouse is not understanding or loving you, ask yourself how you can express your love for him/her more often
- If you are constantly bullied in school, ask yourself how you can stopping behaving like a whimsical pushover, and develop true inner strength in character
- If you desire loyal friends who will stand by you, ask yourself how you can first be loyal and supportive to your friends, who stands by them in their times of need.
Indeed, you cannot control what others do and how they treat you. However, by working on your own behaviors and actions, you can always influence how people act towards you. Genuinely constructive and supportive relationships takes two parties to establish, instead of waiting passively for the other party to change, start by acting positively yourself to kick start the change, and you will often be pleasantly surprised to see positive results coming back.
It’s another weird but true human trait, that we like to reciprocate kindness with kindness, love with love, generosity with generosity. Just think about how you feel when you last received a gift or good deed; you want to return the favor!
So start today, start to contribute to the relationships the way you want them to be. I am sure your relationships will improve very quickly; and healthy, constructive relationships are sure way to sustaining happiness.
Let’s try to imagine that you have all the money that you need in the world, a healthy body and the most loving spouse, family and friends surrounding you. Will you be happy? The answer is a surprising “NO”.
Sure, it may feels good for a while, but after some time, nothing excites you anymore and you wonder what to do next. It will feel like there is nothing to look forward to; each day seems the same as the previous one, and time starts to drag. Life is meaningless, it feels empty…
What you lack is purpose. A sense or reason for living. This is the 4th key area required for happiness.
I am sure that most of you would have at one point or another in your life, thought about the question:
Why am I here?
This is the ultimate question of life; what is the meaning of our temporal stay in this world, if we all are to die someday? What purpose am I suppose to fulfill?
Without getting too philosophical, I believe your purpose is basically what you find as meaningful work in your daily life. It is work that you enjoy doing (even if you are not paid for it), because you believe it improve someone’s life, make the world better, or is valuable in some ways. It is the type of work which you can do for as long as you live, solely because it’s meaningful to you, and gives you a sense of accomplishment. Many people call it by different names, but I think they mean the same thing: passion, purpose, drive, The Reason etc… But for the sake of this discussion, let’s just call this “purpose”.
Unless you find your purpose, your happiness will never be complete. Although I cannot explain why, this is clearly another human trait that has been clearly displayed throughout history: that we want to leave our mark, by having touched someone else’s life in a positive way, through our contributions and work. It’s an inner need to make a positive difference, to have a sense of accomplishment, to feel fulfilled.
So we need to have a purpose. Naturally, the next question you’ll ask is “how do we find our purpose”? To this question, Victor Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived the Nazi concentration camps during The Holocaust has the following to say:
It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.
This basically means that everybody’s purpose is different, and your purpose is up to you to define. Ok, I know this is not really helpful; but take consolation in the fact that your purpose is within your control. It may be just that you are not aware of it yet; but as long as you are on the lookout for it, you will find it eventually.
To help you understand something as abstract as purpose better, let me give you a few examples of people whom I think have found their purpose:
- Mother Teresa - who devoted all her life to helping charity and humanitarian work.
- Steve Jobs - co-founder and CEO of Apple Inc responsible for many leading edge consumer electronics like iPhone, iPod, iBook etc. He has devoted a large part of his working life to producing and delivering these highly functional and elegant products.
- Albert Einstein - world famous physicist for his theory of relativity, who also devoted his entire life to research and contributing to the science field.
- My mother - devoted her entire life to the well-being and development of her children, despite hardship and challenging circumstances.
Well, my last example was just to drive home the point that you don’t need to be world renowned or famous in your achievements to be considered as having found your purpose. It can be something as simple as loving and caring for your family, giving them the best environment to grow; as long as it is something that you find meaningful, gives you a sense of accomplishment and you can devote a large amount of time and effort into, it can be your purpose.
Although finding your purpose is very important, I am not saying that it is easy or straightforward. There are some who are lucky, and knew what they wanted from day one. But for most (including myself), this takes a lot of soul searching and time before you find it.
Honestly, I have only found my purpose in this blog recently. My original intention in setting up this blog is to earn some passive income. When I started, I didn’t know what topic to blog about. I settled on personal development because I have some knowledge and opinions in this area, which I like to share. Over time, I discovered that the value of what I am sharing, and the potential impact I can make to help people. This is really meaningful for me, and I begin to find purpose in helping people improve their lives.
So you see, it was not that I already knew it from day one, or I woke up one morning, knocked my head and just knew that this is the purpose. It’s a journey of experiencing and coming to know oneself.
So if you are having difficulties finding your purpose, don’t be discouraged; you’re not the only one. My advise is to try out different things in life and to follow your heart. Somehow, your heart will tell you when you have struck the pot of gold. It’s very much like falling in love; you cannot define it, but somehow you’ll know when you’re in love.
Balancing The 4 Keys Of Happiness
And so, you now know about the 4 key areas to happiness:
A truly happy and fulfilling life depends on your ability to balance these 4 key areas of happiness. Depending on your character, one area may be more important to you than the other. However, all 4 areas must be developed in order to be happy.
There are many examples around us which attest to this. For example, I don’t believe you can be happy just by having a good family, friendship, a meaningful work, healthy body, but heavily in debts and having to constantly worry about your next pay slip, can you?
Another common one is neglect of family and friends, or health for pursue of career development, which happens very often in our modern society.
You need to balance developments in each of these 4 areas. The weakest link concept certainly applies here; you will only be as happy as your weakest area allows you to. Depending on your current situation and progress in life, some areas require more development than others. So continue to learn and develop each area, without neglecting any one of them.
I believe it is true when people say that life is a balancing act. It’s always easier to be at the extreme. Being in the gray area and having to balance between black and white is more like an art than a science; it is this that makes life interesting and challenging.
Conclusion
Thank you for following me so far. I hope this has been an enlightening read for you. If you have been expecting a checklist of steps to achieve happiness, I must have disappointed you. Fortunately, life is more varied and colorful than a simple checklist.
My aim of this article is to develop an awareness of what truly contributes to lasting happiness and fulfillment.
I hope the new awareness means a new journey for you (if it’s not already started) to look out for what’s important to you, and to trigger your interest to find more answers. I hope this new awareness will cause you to review your pursue of superficial remedies in materials gains, status or fame; perhaps with the misconception that these things lead to happiness. I hope this new understanding reduce potential wild goose chase and heartaches for you.
Each area of these key areas are very broad self-development topics by themselves and I cannot hope to adequately cover them in depth in one writing. What I have just touched on are just a glimpse into each key area. There will certainly be more sharing of experiences and insights to come in my future writings.
Meanwhile, I hope this new awareness serves you well.
Have a great journey ahead!
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