How many times have you said, "I just want to be happy”?
How many times have you said to someone else, “I just want you to be happy”?
Did you ever stopped to think exactly what happiness means? What, exactly, is this happiness you are desiring?
It is vital to know because it’s hard for your wishes for happiness to come true if you don’t know exactly what happiness is.
What is Happiness?
Probably the best place to start defining happiness is simply by defining what it is not.
A lot of people believe that happiness is having fun at a party, the enthusiasm of new experiences, the pleasure and passion of sex, or the delights of a fine meal. These are all amaizing experiences to be cherished and cultivated but they are not happiness.
These experiences are just the definition of pleasure. They are experiences to have and let pass. A meal to enjoy, then digest.
Pleasure is temporary and must be if it is to continue to please us because if we were to have these ecstatic experiences all the time, our brains will adapt and turn pleasure into routine. If that happens, it will take even more to make us feel good again. Chasing pleasure is not happiness.
So, if happiness is not pleasure, then what is happiness?
Happiness comes when you experience satisfaction and fulfillment Happiness is a feeling of contentment, that life is just the way it should be. Perfect happiness and enlightenment, comes when you have all of your needs satisfied.
Even though perfect happiness may be hard to achieve, and even harder to sustain, happiness is not an either /or case. There are almost limitless degrees of happiness between the bliss of enlightenment and the despair of depression. The majority of us fall somewhere in between, closer to the middle than the edges.
The purpose of this post is to help you to make positive, sustainable changes in your life.
Based on scientific research, I have identified 10 vital keys that will make your life happier and more fulfilling.
Once you will finish reading this post, you will have the skills to better your life and your relationships.
1. Do Things For Others
Helping others is not just good for them and a good deed to do, it will also make you happier and healthier too. Giving also helps us connect to others, creating stronger communities and helping to develop a happier society for everyone. And it's not all about money - we should also give our time, ideas and energy. So if you want to feel good, try to do good!
Doing things for others - eighter small things, unplanned acts or regular volunteering - is a effective way to boost our own happiness as well of those around us. The people we decide to help could be strangers, friends, colleagues, family or neighbours. They may be old or young, nearby or far away.
Giving isn’t just about money, so you don’t have to be rich to give to others. Giving can be as simple as a single kind word, a smile or a thoughtful gesture. It might include giving time, care, thought, skills or attention. Many times these mean as much, if not more, than money.
Many scientific studies have shown that helping others will boost happiness. It does increase life satisfaction, it provides a sense of meaning, it develops feelings of competence, it improves our mood and it reduced stress. It may also help to take our minds off our own troubles too.
Kindness towards others is the glue which connects individual happiness with the community and societal wellbeing. Giving to other people helps us connect with them and meets one of our basic human needs - relatedness.
Kindness and caring also seem to be contagious. If we see someone do something kind or thoughtful, or perhaps we are on the receiving end of kindness, it truly inspires us to be kinder ourselves. Therefore, kindness spreads from one person to the next, changing the behaviour of people who never saw the original act. Kindness truly is the key to creating a happier and more trusting local community.
Science shows there are strong links between happiness and helping others. Happy people are more probable to be interested in or be inclined towards helping other people. It is more likely that they have recently performed acts of kindness or spent a larger percentage of their time or money helping others.
There seems to be a relationship between happiness and helping others at every age:
- Pre-school children who showed empathy were more likely to have happy moods.
- High school students who experienced intense positive feelings were more probable to be involved in community service activities such as volunteering.
Working adults who were happier at work were more inclined to help others.
Volunteering has also been connected to many benefits for senior citizens, including more happiness and life satisfaction.
People who give an amount of their monthly income to charitable causes or spent it buying gifts for others were found to be more happy than people who did not spend on others, and this was regardless of their income level.
Happiness makes us give more to others, and giving more makes us happier, which then leads to a greater tendency to give and so on. This effect is consistent across different cultures.
It makes sense that helping others contributes to our own happiness. Scientists are rethinking the idea of the 'selfish gene' and are exploring the evolution of altruism, compassion, cooperation, and kindness. Human beings are very social creatures and have evolved as a species living with others.
If people are altruistic, they are more probable to be liked by others and build social connections and supportive social networks, which leads to increased feelings of happiness and wellbeing. Participating in shared jobs like community service, and other social activities, can predict how satisfied people are even after other factors are taken into consideration.
Giving help has a stronger link with mental health than receiving it. Studies have proved that volunteers have fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety and they feel more hopeful. It is also related to feeling good about oneself. It can help to distract people from dwelling on their own issues and be grateful for what they already have. Volunteering is also linked with psychological wellbeing.
Giving can also increase how long we live. Studies of older people suggest that those who give support to others may live longer than those who don't. This included support to friends, relatives, neighbours and emotional support to their partner. On the other hand, receiving support did not influence living longer.
Helping is linked with increased happiness and health, but feeling burdened by it can be detrimental, for instance in the case of long-term carers. There is evidence that while giving for pleasure is associated with higher self-esteem, more satisfaction and positive feelings, giving under pressure is not. There are many times when we must give because it is the compassionate response and the right thing to do, for instance in times of crisis or need.
However we should try to match our giving activities to things that we find naturally enjoyable, in line with our own goals and feel are worthwhile for ourselves as well as the reciever. If we are happy givers, the recievers will probably benefit more and we are more likely to continue to give.
2. Connect with People
People with strong and vast social relationships tend to be happier, healthier and live longer. Close relationships with family and friends provide love, support, meaning and boost our feelings of self worth. Wider networks bring a sense of belonging. So taking action to strengthen our relationships and develop connections is essential for happiness.
Our connections with others are at the heart of happiness - theirs and ours. Whether these connections are with our partners, families, friends, neighbours or work colleagues, they all contribute to our happiness.
Scientists acknowledge the central importance of relationships for our wellbeing and our happiness.
Many studies have shown that both the quality and quantity of social connections have an effect on our health and longevity as well as our psychological wellbeing.
Not having close personal ties poses the same level of health risk as smoking and obesity. Having a network of social connections or high levels of social support seems to increase our immunity to infection, lower the risk of heart disease and reduce mental decline as we get older.
Close, secure and supportive relationships are the most important for our well-being, either with our husband, wife, partner, relatives or friends. Research has shown that it's the quality of our relationships that matters the most. This is influenced by:
- Experiencing positive emotions together
- Being able to speak openly and feel understood
- Giving and receiving support
- Shared activities and experiences.
Just as relationships are a two-way thing, it seems the link between happiness and relationships is too. Not only do relationships help to make us much happier, but also happy people seem to have more and better quality relationships.
So working on our relationships is important for happiness and working on our happiness is important for our relationships. That's a win all round!
Naturally we are social creatures and it makes sense that relationships are vital to our happiness - the survival and evolution of the human race has depended on it!
Certainly some eminent psychologists and biologists argue that, contrary to the well-known 'selfish-gene' theory, it might be the survival of the group that is probably to be most successful in evolutionary terms - even if the genes of its members are unrelated.
It does look like we are wired for relationships - think of emotions and behaviours such as love, compassion, kindness, generosity, gratitude, smiling and laughing. Or how hesitant we generally are to break bonds with people and how painful it is when we do.
Our need to feel connected with other people - to love and be loved, and to care and be cared for - is a basic human need. Some experts argue that the ability to love and be loved as well, is the most important human strength.
As well as our close relationships, all of us have wider connections with people across the distinct circles of our lives - at work, in our communities or through our social activities. Even though these relationships are less deep, these are also important for happiness and wellbeing.
Having diverse social connections predicts how long we are going to live and can even impacts how resistant we are to catching colds! Our wider social networks give us a sense of belonging and influence how safe and secure we feel. Developing connections in our Local Community contributes to our own happiness and that of those around us, allowing our communities to flourish.
New research suggests that happiness is contagious across social networks. Our happiness depends not just on the happiness of those in our direct social network, but also on the happiness of the people they know too. To put it differently, happiness ripples out through groups of people, like a pebble thrown into a pond.
We can help to create happier communities by doing what we can to increase our own happiness and also being conscious of the impact our behaviour has on others. Even seemingly small, incidental interactions, such as a friendly smile or act of generosity can make a big difference - to ourselves, the people we interact with and the people they affect too.
3. Look After Your Body
Our body and our mind are connected. Being active it’s not just good for our physical health but will also make us happier. It immediately improves our mood and can even lift us out of a depression. You don't need to run marathons - there are easy things we can all do to be more active each day. And we can also improve our well-being by unplugging from technology and getting outside.
If you are in good shape physically, you will feel a lot better about yourself and the whole world.
You will not just look better, but will be better. Your self-esteem will increase, and you will have a lot more motivation to accomplish other goals in your life. You will also have more energy for the activites you enjoy.
Decide on whatever it is you are going to do. I find that walking is perhaps the most convenient form of exercise, but maybe you prefer to do something completely different. You may choose to join a gym or take an aerobics class.
Start slowly. A three-mile walk is almost as beneficial for you as a three-mile jog. However, you shouldn’t start at this level. Take a short walk today, and lengthen it slightly tomorrow. Keep doing this until you are walking for at least twenty minutes without stopping.
You need to look after your physical body. Most of us pay more attention to the needs of our cars than we do to the body we live in. If something is wrong, go see your doctor. Have regular checkups. If you are a smoker, determine yourself to give it up, for your health's sake.
Any time spent exercising and looking after your body will pay you rich rewards in happiness and quality of life. You deserve the best that life has to offer. Look after your physical body and it will most certainly look after you.
Although most of us don’t really get enough sleep these days, everyone knows that sleep is important: human beings need sleep to live and function properly. But what many people don't know or misunderstand about sleep is how important it is to our overall sense of happiness and wellbeing.
There is a lot of research supporting the pure health benefits of adequate sleep.
Anyone who's ever dealt with insomnia already knows from experience that feeling tired makes us cranky. An exhausted person is not a happy person.
Scientiests agree that most adults need about 8 hours of sleep each night for optimal health.
4. Live Life Mindfully
Do you ever felt there must be more to life? Well good news, there is! And it is right here in front of us. We just have to stop and take notice. Learning to become more mindful and aware can do wonders for our well-being in all aspects of life. It will help us get in balance with our feelings and will stop us dwelling on the past or worrying about the future - so we get more out of each day.
The key to taking notice is 'mindfulness'. Mindfulness is generally defined as "the state of being attentive to and aware of what is taking place in the present". The two important elements of mindfulness are that:
It is intentional (we are consciously doing it)
We are accepting, rather than judging, of what we notice.
To put it differently, mindfulness is "openly experiencing what is there." It is about having as completely as possible awareness of what is around us - what we can see, hear, touch or taste. And also what is occuring inside - our thoughts and feelings. It is about noticing all this but not getting caught up in thinking and worrying about what we are observing. It then gives us more control of what we choose to give our attention to.
A growing number of scientific studies are proving the benefits of mindfulness in many areas of our lives such as our physical and mental well-being, our relationships and our performance at school and at work.
And it seems to have benefits for everyone, from children to the elderly. However, mindfulness is something that, in today's busy, multi-tasking world, hardly any of us do naturally - but it's something that everybody can learn and benefit from. It's simple, but can feel hard until you learn how to do it. That's why it takes practice.
You can bring mindfulness into your day at any moment when you're awake. It is a skill that is many times associated with meditation, but it's not just practiced when sitting silently. Learning how to meditate is just one of the ways of learning and practicing mindfulness.
Being more engaged in the present moment can lead to richer experiences that could otherwise pass us by while we are wrapped up in thoughts about the past or constantly thinking about what we are doing next.
Mindfulness has been proven to help people manage pain, reduce anxiety, depression and blood pressure .
In some cases it has been shown to improve the immune system and certain skin conditions.
It has also been shown to be linked to elderly people living longer.
Recent studies shows that mindfulness literally changes our brains - for the better. People who have practiced it daily, show fewer signs of stress, positive changes in the parts of the brain associated with positive emotion , specific patterns of activity associated with compassion towards others and thickening of the areas of the brain associated with sensory processing.
Mindfulness seems to be an efficient way of managing stress levels. Several studies have shown that certain forms of mindfulness practices are linked with reduced levels of the stress hormone, cortisol.
Some psychologists suggest that mindfulness leads to improved well-being and flourishing because it promotes better regulation of behaviour. It does this because it provides us with a fuller awareness of internal and external information, allowing more accurate assessment, more conscious choice and so more flexible, less automatic or impulsive reactions
5. Keep Learning New Things
Learning does affect our well-being in lots of positive ways. It exposes us to new concepts and helps us stay curious and engaged. It also provides us with a sense of accomplishment and helps improve our self-confidence and resilience. There are many methods to learn new things - not just through formal qualifications. We may share a skill with friends, join a club, play a new sport, learn to sing and so much more.
Why will this make us happier? It’s actually a core need for psychological well-being. Learning will help us develop confidence and a sense of self-efficacy. It is also a way of connecting with others too.
There is evidence that shows us that adult learning appears to have its most positive impact on self-esteem and self-efficacy when the information provided meets the needs of the learner, and also when the person is at a moment in their life when they are ready and receptive to benefit from it.
Learning also boosts our creativity. Ideas may come from making connections between seemingly unrelated things.
Learning something new in one area of our lives can spark ideas in another. So curiosity and creative thinking go hand-in-hand.
This might also help with developing what psychologists call ‘flow’ or ‘being in the zone’ – when we’re so engaged in what we’re doing that we lose the sense of time and of ourselves.
Education has been widely documented by researchers as the single variable tied most directly to improved health and longevity. And when people are intensely engaged in doing and learning new things, their well-being and happiness can blossom.
This effect becomes even more valuable as we get older. Even in old age, it turns out, our brains have more plasticity to adapt and help us more than was once thought.
6. Have Goals To Look Forward To!
Feeling good about the future is vital for our happiness. We should have goals to motivate us and these must be challenging enough to excite us, but also need to be achievable. If we attempt the impossible, this brings unnecessary stress. Picking ambitious but realistic goals gives our lives direction and brings a feeling of accomplishment and fulfillment when we achieve them.
Goals are the way we can make our values and dreams become reality. Happiness doesn't just happen - it comes from thinking, planning and chasing things that are significant to us. Scientific research proves that setting and working towards goals can improve our happiness in different ways, including:
- Being a source of interest, engagement or pleasure
- Giving us a sense of meaning and purpose
- Having a sense of accomplishment when we achieve what we set out to - this will also develop our confidence and belief in what we can do in the future
Goals help focus our attention. Actively working towards them seems to be as vital for our well-being as achieving the end results we are aiming for.
Goals are most successful when they're something we truly want to accomplish and when we set them for ourselves – instead of being something someone else wants us to do.
Goals may be long-term, short-term or even day-to-day. A long-term goal can be a big career or life goal - for instance to become a doctor or acquire a qualification. A short-term goal can be a plan for the coming weeks or months - for instance to organise a party or join a 5-a-side team. A day-to-day goal can be just to cook something different or get in touch with an old friend.
Smaller goals may appear unimportant. But having personal projects that are important to us - and are manageable - has been frequently shown to improve well-being, particularly when they're supported by others around us. And it's even better if we can link our smaller goals back to our bigger goals and priorities in life.
The way we set goals influences the actions we take to accomplish them, the work we put in and how persistent we are at sticking to them. Good goal-setting can be learned. Couple of our goals may be difficult, but it's important that they're still achievable. Accomplishing our goals brings a sense of fulfillment and makes us feel more optimistic about the future.
Science proves that people who are optimistic are more likely to be happier, healthier and cope better in tough times. Even though we may have a natural tendency to be more optimistic or pessimistic, there are things we should do to take a more optimistic outlook, without losing contact with reality.
Optimism is about believing that things are more probable to turn out good than bad. Not surprisingly our level of optimism can impact how persistent we are in working for our goals and how we deal with setbacks.
Taking an optimistic approach to our goals includes:
- Picking goals that take us towards something positive we want to accomplish, instead of goals that help us avoid things we don't want.
- Being proactive when issues arise and looking for ways to resolve them, instead of ignoring or putting off dealing with problems.
- Refrain from dwelling on the negative - learning to accept difficult things that we cannot change and re-adjusting our goals instead of avoiding them.
Even though there is some evidence of benefits to pessimism, most of the research shows that optimism is better overall for our health and happiness. Studies suggest that in hard situations - such as starting college, aging or dealing with medical problems - optimists seem to experience less distress and higher well-being than pessimists.
But it’s essential we keep our feet on the ground. An overly optimistic perspective can be unhelpful. Being optimistic does not mean blindly disregarding the negative facts. Having unrealistically big expectations will lead to disappointment, a sense of failure and a more pessimistic outlook of the future.
When we think about the future we are all guessing to some extent - so we need to base our goals and our judgments on what little we know now. Choosing a realistic but hopeful view of the outcomes appears to increase the likelihood that things will really turn out ok.
7. Find Ways To Bounce Back
Everyone of us have times of stress, loss, failure or trauma in our lives. But the way we respond to these has a big impact on our wellbeing. We usually cannot choose what happens to us, but in principle we can decide our own attitude to what happens. In practice it's not always easy, but one of the most exciting discoveries from recent research is that resilience, like every other life skill, can be learned.
Resilience comes from the Latin word resilio - to jump back - and is increasingly used in day-to-day language to depict our ability to deal with and bounce back from adversity. Many people describe it as the capacity to bend rather than breaking when under pressure or difficulty, or the capacity to persevere and adapt when faced with challenges. Resilience also helps to make us more open to and willing to take on new opportunities. So being resilient is much more than just survival. It also includes letting go, learning and growing along with finding healthy ways to cope.
We can all take action to increase our resilience. We are likely to experience ups and downs so developing resilience is important. We can't always anticipate or control what life throws at us, but we can develop a range of skills and nurture our resources to help us respond flexibly, efficiently deal with challenges, recover quicker and even learn and grow as a result.
It may even lower our risk of depression and anxiety and allow us to age successfully. Even more, the same skills can help us overcome the fear of taking on new opportunities and help us develop in other ways too.
Our resilience is mostly influenced by three key sets of factors:
- Our development as a child and as a teenager
- External factors such as our relationships with others
- Internal factors such as how we choose to interpret events, manage our emotions and regulate our behaviour.
There is a saying that probably all of us have heard: "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger" and science has proven that it does have some truth in it. Experiencing some adversity during our lives it will increase our resilience by allowing us to learn ways of coping, identify and engage our support network. It also provides us with a sense of mastery over past adversities, which makes us feel we will be able to deal with it more effectively in the future. We have definitely all experienced things that are stressful in the beginning but later find we are no longer fazed by similar activities.
Psychologists suggest that most of us aren't as ready as we might think to face adversity and so we run the risk of giving up or feeling helpless in the face of difficulty. But, if we change the way we think about adversity, we can boost how resilient we are. Research shows that our capacity for resilience is not fixed or in our genes, nor are there limits on how resilient we can be.
8. Look For What's Good
Positive emotions - like joy, gratitude, fulfillment, inspiration, and pride - are not just great at the time. Recent studies show that frequently experiencing them creates an 'upward spiral', helping to build our resources.
Even though we should be realistic about life's ups and downs, it helps to focus on the good aspects of any situation - the glass half full instead of the glass half empty.
For a long time, the role of positive emotions has been a puzzle. Even though these feelings are nice to have, it didn’t seem they were important for our survival as a species. Negative emotions on the other hand, were vital - helping us when we faced a threat by triggering our 'fight or flight' response.
If we see a ferocious animal charging at us, we experience fear and rapid changes occur in our body and brain. Our focus of attention automatically narrows onto the source of danger and escape routes, and drives us to instant, specific responses, in this case to get the hell out of the way.
But now new scientific research is showing that positive emotions have the effect of expanding our perceptions, in much the same way that negative emotions narrow them. This explanding helps us to see more, respond more flexibly, in new ways and become more creative. It makes us more open to new ideas or experiences and we feel closer to and more trusting of others.
Feeling good in the short term may also improve how we feel in the long run. The new experiences and greater openness that results from positive emotions can cause lasting changes in our lives.
Let's take a couple of simple examples:
- A feeling of interest in something we read can make us want to learn more about a subject, leading to a fulfilling hobby or even a rewarding life's work.
- Finding the same things funny as somebody else can lead to them becoming a close friend or even a partner.
- Feeling joy from seeing beautiful flowers in the park can put us in a positive frame of mind and make us more excited about an opportunity that comes our way.
So over time, positive emotions help us to create the resources that lead us to living happier lives. Even more they can act as a buffer against stress and help us get by when we face difficulties.
Experiencing positive emotions is good for us, so we should try to find ways to build more of them into our lives. Studies show that positive emotions are contagious and when we feel good it may also have a knock on effect on those around us. So by doing things that make us feel good, we can make others feel good too.
However this doesn't mean we should just put all our energy into having fun in the present moment and forget about the things that take more effort. We should have a healthy balance between enjoying the moment and doing other things that bring meaning and fulfilment in the long run.
While it is true that enjoying the moment can increase how happy we feel overall, there are lots of different positive emotions we can experience and not all of them come from "having fun". For instance, some are feelings we get when we're truly passionate about something or have put our best effort in to achieving something. Others may come from quiet moments, like a few minutes of peace and calm in an otherwise hectic day.
Also, doing things that may be fun at the time can sometimes leave us feeling bad afterwards – such as those last few drinks that we regret the next morning! And many times we choose to do things that can leave us feeling frustrated at the moment but where we know the end result will bring us fulfilment. So we should have a balance between feeling good in the short term and activities that bring greater happiness in the long term.
9. Be Comfortable With Who You Are
No-one's perfect. But so often we compare our insides to other people's outsides. Dwelling on our flaws – on what we're not instead of what we've got - makes it more difficult to be happy. Learning to accept ourselves, and being more tolerant to ourselves when things go wrong, increases our happiness, our resilience and our well-being. It also helps us accept others as they are.
Having endless criticism in our heads about not being good enough is a definite way to be unhappy. This doesn't mean we should disregard our weaker areas or bad stuff that happens, but it simply means accepting that no-one is perfect, us included. It means putting our imperfections into perspective - consider them as normal instead of out of the ordinary. It also means a shift of focus, from what we don't have or can't do to what we have or can do.
Psychologists say there are two parts to our well-being - feeling good and functioning well. Functioning well, consists of a number of key psychological factors that contribute to how good or happy we feel. Some of these factors are self-esteem and self-acceptance.
Self-esteem, or feeling positive about ourselves it has been for a long time a subject of psychological study. Self-acceptance expands this idea to: being aware of our strengths and our weaknesses, coming to terms with our past and feeling good about ourselves while realizing our limitations. Essentially, self-acceptance doesn't mean disregarding what we don't do well or mistakes we've made, but it’s more about working with rather than against ourselves.
If we are low on self-acceptance, we can be bothered by aspects of who we think we are and long to be something or someone different. This may lead to dwelling more on what's wrong with us or what we aren't, leading to a lot of negative self-criticism. And this will really get in the way of making the most of ourselves, and of our happiness.
There are many scientific studies that shows people with a balanced sense of self-worth or self-esteem will experience more happiness and optimism and less negativity, anxiety and depression than those with low self-esteem.
We have all heard the expression 'Treat others as you would wish to be treated' but maybe it also needs to be reversed. We always give ourselves a hard time for things we would probably be compassionate towards in others. For instance think of a close friend failing to get a promotion. We don't tell them "you're no good" or "you'll never get anywhere". Most likely we'd say "you can try again next time" or "maybe you should look for a new job that will make the most of your skills".
Modern psychology and neuroscience has recently started to explore 'self-compassion' which has been a Buddhist concept for thousands of years. Research studies are showing that self-compassion is linked with greater happiness, optimism, curiosity, resilience and reduced depression and anxiety.
10. Be Part Of Something Bigger
People who have meaning and purpose in their lives tend to be happier, have more control and get the most out of what they do. They also experience less stress, anxiety and depression. But how do we find 'meaning and purpose’? For some of us it might be our religious faith, being a parent or doing a job that makes a difference. The answer is different for each of us but they all involve being connected to something bigger than ourselves.
Scientific research shows that having a spiritual side to our lives makes us happier and healthier.
It helps us answer the question: Why are we here? Usually it's something that can't be reduced or goes beyond the day-to-day. It guides us in how we decide to live our lives, what we aim for and gives us a framework for the goals we set. It may help us make sense of what happens to us, provide a source of comfort and strength in hard times and helps us feel that we are not alone.
For most of us, our relationships with others are a vital source of meaning in our lives - as parents, friends and members of a community. Other primary sources of meaning include finding your 'calling’ in life. This could be a job or hobby that you're passionate about - or having a deep connection to nature. What is certain is that 'meaning' is something very individual. Nobody can tell us what gives meaning to our lives - we need to find out for ourselves.
There are a lot of different ways of finding meaning in our lives. For many people it comes through experiences , others through profound reflection, others from loving and being loved and others just from the way they decide to approach other people and the world around. We can each discover our own way - but it’s vital to remember the importance of meaning when making big decisions about our families, jobs, lifestyles and priorities.
Even though finding meaning is about connecting to something beyond ourselves, it also appears to tap into to something fundamental within all of us. For many people this becomes obvious early on - for instance a calling to teach or become a doctor. For some however it is a search that may take a lifetime. And many times a practice, such as meditation, can help us become more in touch with our feelings and deepest selves.
A good approach is to purposely think about which activities, people and beliefs give us the strongest sense of purpose and passion. Then we should make sure that we prioritise these things in our busy lives. Many times we're so busy just plunging ahead and end up drained at the end of each day without ever having time to think about what really gives our lives meaning.
Usually it is only when we reach important new phases in our lives, such as parenthood, middle age or retirement - or when something occurs to disrupt our lives such as a trauma - that we begin to think about the point of being here and what is really important. However it's never too soon (or too late) to start putting the really important things first.
Thanks for reading.
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Happiness is one of the prerequisite to obtain success in life. I am so glad that I found this post. This is one of the best steem posts I have read that entails on how you could possibly change your life. It opened my mind to what happiness really is.
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