Happy Life – The Fullfilment Project

Spirit Of Generosity

Christmas is a time of giving, as the saying goes. It is a time when we spend a lot of money on presents for our loved ones. We also spend our time with then too. I would argue that it is more meaningful and more of a gift to spend time with others. We can always get more money, but time is a non-renewable resource. Who we choose to spend our time with is meaningful and has a significant impact on our lives.

This generous spirit is not something we should limit to the Christmas period. Ideally, it should be a way of life. If we live our lives with a generous spirit then we will make those around us happier, whether they are family, friends, or colleagues, or people we are meeting for the first time. The wider we extend who we are generous to the happier our lives will be.

To help others without expecting anything in return is planting trees under whose shade we will not sit. The fruits of the trees will benefit those we will never meet. It is also true that one generous act encourages another and the wave of generosity goes out into the world making it better one small act of generosity at a time. Even a smile is a gift that can lift someone’s spirits. So go and be generous every day and see how your life changes and how you change the lives of others.

Choose Your Direction In Life

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Relationships, Success

When you stand or sit still you are already moving. The Earth is spinning moving you in one direction, the Earth is orbiting the Sun moving you in another direction, our galaxy is rotating moving you in another direction and the universe is expanding moving you in yet another direction. We don’t feel any of this because the speed is constant in all of these directions, but we are always being moved. When we pick a direction to move in and we start to move then we are choosing our own direction.

In life we are often moved by the will of others or our circumstances, but in each situation we have a choice in how we respond. Be a victim or believe in yourself. Be pushed down by life or rise up. Choose how you move and no matter how the world moves you, you will be in charge of your life.

Everything We Do Is About Legacy

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Leadership, Relationships, Success

When we think of legacy, we think of having children or building a business or community organisation that will go on for generations, but I would argue that everything we do is about legacy.

Whenever we interact with someone, the impact, whether positive or negative, from our words and actions can be far-reaching. Like ripples across water, we can deeply wound or deeply enthuse those we interact with. Someone could be having a terrible day, but kind words or an actual of kindness can turn their day around and could be a catalyst for positive change.

Alternatively, if we are mean or unkind, we could change a person’s life trajectory down a dark path. Our words and actions have the power to impact the lives of others significantly.

Some years ago, I met a homeless man sitting outside a shop crying. I stopped to talk to him, and he told me that it was his 40th birthday and he was alone. It was November, and we were coming into a cold winter in the UK. He told me that he was on a waiting list for a hostel but had to wait 12 weeks. This meant he had to survive living on the streets through the winter before he could get a place to live.

I talked with him for a while, and as I lived nearby, I went home and packed a bag of warm clothes, including a woolly hat and gloves, and gave them to him. He was very grateful. I like to think that this small act of kindness got him through the winter and may have dissuaded thoughts of suicide during that difficult time. I also like to think that he has a better life now and is passing on the goodwill to others. I have no way of knowing, of course, but I hope. A small act of generosity from me could have had a big impact on him.

We don’t know the impact we have on those we interact with day to day. So, be kind, be generous, and be accepting of others, and together we can make the world a better place one interaction at a time, and if we make this a habit then this will change us for the better too.

The Rhyming of the Universe.

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Relationships, Success

So many elements of the world and the universe work together like musical notes, like a symphony of sounds. Like the rhyming of poetry. Womb rhymes with tomb, bet rhymes with debt, and so on. Words that oppose each other yet are paired by their meaning. We give things words and meaning, we categorise and divide up the world so that we can make sense of the complexities of it all, but really, it is all one complex happening that we are each a part of.

We shy away from thinking about these complexities and prefer to think of ourselves in tribes and countries, races and genders. It is less scary to be part of a tribe and not to have to face the enormity of the universe. Division, however, invariably creates conflict. From the very first them and us, we are in conflict, even if just in our own heads.

Things like birth and death, work and play, happy and sad are not opposites in a finite sense. They are more like Yin and Yang, opposite sides of a circle. Ultimately, a circle only has one side. It is the balance of life, whether our individual lives or the interconnected web of all living things. The universe is not a collection of opposites, it is a symphony of sounds, a rhyming or words, it is one big happening.

Poem: Flow

Poems

Choose a Better Response

Happiness, Health, Relationships, Success

I often see people swiping their arms at flies buzzing around them, which is usually accompanied by comments such as “damn fly” or “irritating fly.” I have increasingly been of the opinion that being annoyed by a fly is a choice.

This comes from the perspective that life and the world are not as they are but how we are. We interpret the events that go on around us based on the meaning we put on them. This is not to negate verifiable facts that exist independent of interpretation. What I mean is whether we see something as good or bad, intimidating or joyous.

If it is true that we put such meaning on the events that we experience, then we choose to see a fly as irritating. We can, if we choose to, say hi to the fly and thank them for their visit, for example. They can not harm us and will usually fly away shortly after they fly near to us. If we apply this idea to the rest of our lives, there are many situations where we can choose a better response rather than reacting with negative emotions.

Be A Rebel, Be Content

Happiness, Health, Success

To buy the new fashion item or the new gadget, etc is to be unhappy with what you already have because it is not the new thing being sold to you. That is what it boils down to. This comes from the story told by those selling things to us that what they are offering will make us happy. This cannot be true if the last thing they sold us, which is now out of fashion or less up to date, also was supposed to make us happy.

It is better to try and be content with what we already have. Otherwise we will be leaping from shiny object to shiny object and never really being happy, just momentarily joyful.

Build The Life You Want

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Leadership, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

I recently watched an interview at Harvard with Oprah Winfrey and Arthur Brooks where they were discussing the book that they wrote together called Build The Life You Want. This book is on my to do list of books to read, but they covered the essentials of it in this interview. You can watch the video by following this link, but here are the essentials.

Happiness has three elements.

Enjoyment (not pleasure)
Meaning or purpose
Satisfaction

Enjoyment is pleasure plus people and memory. You must spend time with other people and make memories together to experience enjoyment. Also, you cannot keep satisfaction through acquiring things. There is an equation, however, for lasting satisfaction. Lasting satisfaction equals all the things you have divided by all the things you want. If you reduce the things that you want you increase lasting satisfaction.

Faith is believing that there is something larger than yourself. This could be God, nature, the universe, etc. The point is that you are not the centre of your universe.

As well as the elements of happiness that are mentioned above, there are institutions in your life that all need your attention to be happier. They are like a pension fund where you have to deposit in all of them to reap the rewards of feeling happier further down the road. These institutions are:

Family
Friends
Faith
Work that serves others

It is important not to think of happiness as a destination, but to aim for happierness. To be happier than you are now. It is a shift in state by ensuring that you focus on all four institutions.

When good things happen to you or bad things happen to you a good practice is to think, how can I use this in the service of others? This will mean that the bad things and the good things have purpose and you have control over what you do with what you get.

It is good to do small things with great love. Don’t always focus on having a big impact or making a big change. Doing small things with great love will, in the end, have more of an impact. After all greatness is determined by service to others.

Social media is the junk food of social life. There is no substitute for being in the same room as someone and being able to look them in the eye. This human to human interaction will give you more of the feel good hormones and will build stronger relationships. Interacting through screens is not the same.

Finally, your legacy is not some great thing that you leave behind, it is every life that you touch.

The Atomic Bomb And The Infinite Scroll

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Health, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

When navigating the world countries and companies will try to invent things to tip the balance in their favour. In the case of the atomic bomb, during the second world war America was concerned that Germany was building a bomb that could destroy entire cities so they set about figuring out how to create an atomic bomb themselves. They put together a team of physicists and others to secretly figure out and build this new bomb. When the first bomb was tested J. Robert Oppenheimer, the lead physicist, is said to have quoted the Bhagavad-Gita with “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” He regretted the invention. Then America dropped two atomic bombs in Japan killing many many innocent people and the age of the nuclear bomb began.

Aza Raskin invented the infinite scroll on mobile devices. This meant that when you scroll down on your social media account new content keeps being generated infinitely. The inventor said afterwards “It’s as if social media companies are taking behavioral cocaine and just sprinkling it all over your interface and that’s the thing that keeps you like coming back and back and back.” Extreme maybe, but the hit of dopamine that you get from finding a new video or post that you like over and over again is creating a society addicted to their devices.

The first example of the Atomic Bomb is far more extreme than the infinite scroll, but the point is that we need to consider the consequences of what we do. Making decisions for moral and ethical reasons could not be needed more. We are seemingly more divided and more obsessed with status and money than we have been before. It is time to live lives with values and principles.

Reducing The Suffering Of Others

Happiness, Health, Relationships

Naturally in life we don’t want to see other people suffer. However, we often go about the world interacting with others from our own point of view. We think about things in terms of how they impact us. This can cause us to be reactive to life’s events, asking ‘Why have they done this to me?’, for example. A better question to ask is ‘Why did they do that?’ This moves the thinking from us to them and allows us to consider the reason the other person is behaving the way they are.

Hurt people hurt people. So if someone hurts you with their words or their actions it is an indication that they are suffering, and rather than becoming reactive and trying to hurt them back, we could be compassionate and empathetic. This diffuses the situation and creates a space to helps the other person to heal. We will heal a little too.

If we reframe how we see our interactions with others and move from ‘How can I make things better for me?’ to ‘How can I reduce their suffering?’, then your relationships will improve and life will become more fulfilling.

Look For Opportunities

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

Sometimes life can seem overwhelming and we unconsciously start thinking about things in terms of the worst case scenario. We say things like “I’ll never get it done” or “Its never going to work.” This type of thinking will reduce the chances of things going well and it may even become a self fulfilling prophecy.

We often tell ourselves that we are just being realistic, but we are actually being negative. We are more likely to succeed if we have a positive mindset that looks for ways around problems. If you think of water, it is fluid and flexible. It goes around and under obstacles. Yet water can wear away rock. Many rivers are there because water carved a path through the landscape while taking the path of least resistance.

We don’t have to fight to the last or keep doing the same thing because we have invested time into one approach. Life works best if you use creativity and humility to problem solve your way through it. And problem solving assumes that there is a solution. Change your mindset and you open up lots of new possibilities. Life is a series of opportunities, but you have to be looking for them to find them

You Are Not Broken

Happiness, Health, The Pathway To Fulfilment

Often when we have experienced trauma we feel broken, we call ourselves broken and sometimes other use this word to describe us. I would like to respectfully disagree. No one is broken.

Trauma damages our sense of well-being and we can feel as if we will never feel well again, but this is not true. There is always a path back to the light of wholeness. We may need support from the people around us and the resources we have access to, like well chosen books.

It may take time, sometimes it can take years, but the things missing that took away your wholeness can be brought back into your lives and wholeness will be possible again. You are never alone and you are not broken. You are a beautifully unique human being that has a unique that only you can bring to the world. I for one am happy you are sharing this life long adventure we us.

How Do You Use Your Values?

Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

You may have heard it said that love and fear are opposites and dismissed it as mumbo jumbo. However, there is brain science around the way that we operate depending on whether we live life where we have more fear or we have more love in it.

We usually live by the values that we hold, but if we are fearful debates become arguments and persuasion becomes threats being made. Just like alkaline and acid the PH of your life will be somewhere on a spectrum between fear and love.

In life, if you have problems with love you should reflect on how fear is impacting your life and if you have problems with fear you should reflect on the love you have in your life.

In order to live your values well you need to have a world view that comes more from love than fear. You should not try to get rid of fear completely, however, as a fearless life will be a short life. Reflect on how you are living your values and where you feel you are on the fear love spectrum and work on making positive adjustments.

You Are What You Think

Happiness, Health

What you focus on you feel. If the same thing is repeated it can become who you think you are. We can become who we fear we might be or become who we hope we will be.

If we think the worst will likely happen then our brains will look for evidence of this being true. If we think the best will happen then our brains will do the same. Thinking positive is clearly the better option.

There are a lot of positive things we can be grateful for. The Sun came up today, as it has every day of your life so far and for many many years before you arrived here in your life. If the Sun disappeared I have heard it said that in 18 hours all life on Earth would be gone.

The Sun is essential for life to exist on this planet, yet we rarely spare a thought for how fortunate we are that all life on Earth gets another day, and another day, and so on.

If you begin the day just being grateful for the Sun rising, you might find other things to be grateful for and you will likely have a good day, because your mind will look for evidence for it.

Living An Authentic Life

Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

Often we hold a version of ourselves in our heads made up of expectations. Usually expectations of others that we have made our own. This is not who we are, it is a made up version of us. When we set these expectations we will likely fall short of them, because they are not aligned with who we are.

This creates frustration and, in some cases, depression. We need to let this version of us go and replace it by figuring out our values, our beliefs and our ethics. These three things will be essential to living a life as your authentic self. This is what is meant by being yourself. It is a lot of work, but a life well lived is worth it.

The Work Of Being Happy

Happiness, Health, The Pathway To Fulfilment

There is an impulse in us to avoid negative thoughts and feelings at all costs. Some, however, dwell within the negativity and let it take them over. Neither approach, I feel, will be effective in the long run, if you want to be happy. It is better to engage our negative thoughts and feelings and invite them in for tea, so to speak.

Once they become familiar to us as aspects of ourselves then we can understand why they are there and resolve the underlying causes. This is the work of living a happy and fulfilling life. I recommend utilising both meditation and writing a daily journal.

Living Well

Achieving Goals, Happiness, Success, The Pathway To Fulfilment

We often think of a good life as a full life, where we focus on the content of our lives. We cherish wealth and possessions and how other people see us. We cherish successes and we avoid failures. This is a busy life not a life well lived.

An apple tree does not have such objectives, its only objective is to thrive. It exists only to be an apple tree, but its branches provide homes for birds and its shade protection from the sun for all that rest under it. Its apples feed people and animals. Its presence in the world benefits those around it.

The context within which the apple tree lives is more important than the content of its achievements. It is connected to all life around it. If we are to thrive we need to focus on the context of our lives not the content of it. We need to try and thrive, as all life does.

Taking Reality As It Is

Happiness, The Pathway To Fulfilment

When on a spiritual path or the path to self mastery we need to be careful to take reality as it is. We can see life as heaven or hell, depending on how we see our circumstances. Neither of which will necessarily be a true reflection of reality.

We often overlay our past experiences onto what is happening and make assumptions about what people mean or what impact something will have on us. There is much wisdom in the teachings of both religious and secular leaders.

One way of testing if an approach to life is a wise one is whether it makes you happier or not. Wisdom followed correctly should make you happier and your life better. If following a teaching or advice makes you more unhappy, I would argue that it is not wisdom. Wisdom is the root to a happier life.