Rules for A Happy Life
Life Changing Tips For Long Lasting Happiness and Fulfillment
Finding happiness in life can be a long and difficult journey to take, many people spend their lifetime looking for it.
We may search for happiness in life through religion, philosophy, spirituality, therapy, relationships… Unfortunately, most of us today will live life mindlessly and not even think about the question of ‘how can I live a happy and fulfilling life’.
For the past few years, I’ve pondering upon this questions and spent many hours researching and reading about the subject from as many angles as I could. Eventually, I’ve managed to boil it down to a few critical and effective points and rules.
Following any of these rules can enhance your happiness, but not as much as following all of them!
Let’s dig in…
1. Set Goals but Enjoy the Experience
Always set future goals and targets for your life, but do not lose the joy of experiencing life and the tasks leading to the goals themselves. The joy in life is found in the journey and not the destination.
2. Hope for the Best, Plan for the Worst
It is always a good thing to be optimistic about the future; after all, we can easily see happiness linked with optimism. However, life does not usually workout the way we want it to.
Having a plan for the worst outcome can ease the blow of the bad situation if it occurs. You will be able to take life much more easily this way.
3. You don’t Choose where You’re Born
Regardless if you were born to rich parents, poor, educated, uneducated, Developed/Undeveloped country, you had no choice in that decision, live with it!
The choice that you will have to make in your adult life is wither you want to live your limited life in the misery of blaming the world for your problems or will you take charge of your life and make the best out of it? That is entirely your choice to make.
4. Balance your life
Life is complicated and bad things will always happen to good people, which is just how reality works. We simply cannot lie or deceive ourselves by saying “have happy thoughts” and “look at the bright side”; it is all about the balance of the good and the bad. The good experiences reinforces your motivation and bad experiences will help you learn and grow. Embrace both with open arms.
5. Create a Routine
It is beneficial for mental health and for clearing the clutter in the brain to Have a morning routine (shave, shower, gym, water, make the bed…). Routines mean less unnecessary conscious brain activities where you can devote those precious thinking resources to plan your future, your day, business ideas, solving problems instead of thinking: “where did I put my socks?”.
6. Step away from Your Comfort Zone
Doing challenging things will help you grow. It is kind of like a happiness investment; you sacrifice a little bit of happiness now for more happiness in the future.
The more you push yourself into doing things you are not comfortable with (public speaking, writing course, reading…) the higher you expose yourself to opportunities for success that will result in a happier and fulfilling life.
7. Stay Away from Social Media
More studies are showing links between social media consumption and higher levels of depression and suicide in young adults.
In the medical world, depression is mainly treatable by increasing Serotonin levels in the brain. One of Serotonin’s functions can be thought of as the chemical linked to personal status in society (your level in the social hierarchy).
When we consume social media content, we subconsciously start comparing ourselves to other people’s perfect pictures, vacations, achievements, etc., which in turn reduces our perceived level of status in social terms where we feel like under-achievers, normal or flawed. But the reality is: nobody is perfect!
The message here is this: try to solely compare ‘yourself today’ to ‘yourself yesterday’ or a month ago, as that should be your only benchmark for improvement; and not to other people hiding behind filters or with vastly different circumstances than yours.
8. Understand your true self
Identifying the real YOU is one the most powerful tools for a mentally stable and a happy life. You may use meditation, self-reflection, self-authoring (where you right your own life story) and finding your true passion.
Once we are able to align our daily actions with our true self/identity, all our activities become more fun and enjoyable as they drive us closer to our goals and passions every time we do them.
The contrast is when you are stuck at a dead-end job and you start dreading every day that you wake up in the morning (and keep hitting that snooze button). Every action you take in that context is awful, fills you with depression, and may force you to run after addictions to numb the daily pains (alcohol, nicotine, and mindless social media browsing…)
9. Always plan your day
Planning your day and breaking down big goals into smaller tasks is one of the best ways to achieving hard and big tings in life.
We always push and procrastinate tasks that seem too big for our subconscious brain to handle at once. One way to deal with that is called Chunking. You split the bigger tasks into smaller manageable chunks that you can do within a short amount of time.
With every small task you tick-off your task-list, a small hit of dopamine (the chemical responsible for motivation and pleasure) rushes through your brain and pushes you to do more. The best part is that dopamine is addictive (which can be a good thing if used right) and that means once you get into the habit of finishing small tasks you get addicted to doing more and more.
10. Choose your friends carefully
You are the average of the five people you spend with most of your time. Do not make friends that will bring you down and demotivate you, you need to have a close circle of people that can positively challenge you and help you grow and achieve more together.
11. Learn Something New Everyday
Create a habit of learning new things on a daily basis. You can use books, YouTube, audio-books or by having conversations with wise and knowledgeable people.
Your mind is your main tool for problem solving and life is all about problem solving (‘what car/house to buy’, ‘what outfit should I ware for the interview’, ‘what should I have for lunch’, ‘what business should I start’…). The more knowledge and learning you accumulate, the more solutions you will have in your capacity.
12. Do not let addiction get to you
Do not destroy yourself with addictions such as nicotine, porn, social media, sugar, alcohol…
Be careful when you comply with social pressure to smoke, have a drink…, all addictive substances affect our bodies and brains negatively and create their own withdrawal symptoms. If you are a smoker for example, try to remember the time before you started smoking, has smoking improved you relaxation, taste for good food or taste of coffee? Most probably not. On the contrary, it seems like it has decreased the joy associated with any of these activities.
13. Forget about the Joneses!
Do not keep up with the Joneses. Do not comply with society’s pressures for getting the bigger car or house. You are wasting your money on things you do not need to impress people you do not like, that is really an awful mindset standing in the face of your happiness.
14. Do not argue to win
Winning a fight or argument when you have to live with the defeated person is a very bad strategic mistake. All you create is resentment and hatred from the other person just to satisfy your ego and win a stupid argument.
What happens with time when you continue along this path is creating more distance between you and the defeated person until one day you walk away from each other as it becomes unbearable to argue anything.
References and Further Readings
· Ikigai — Puigcerver, Hector Garcia
· The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains — Carr, Nicholas
· Atomic Habits — Clear, James
· The Happiness Equation— Pasricha, Neil
· Unlimited Power— Anthony Robbins
· Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending — Dunn, Elizabeth
· Start with Why — Simon Sinek
· 12 Rules for Life — Jordan Peterson
· Mastery — Robert Greene
· The Power of Habit— Duhigg, Charles
· Fooled by Randomness— Taleb, Nassim Nicholas
· How to Change Your Mind— Pollan, Michael
