The Art of Predicting Your Own Lasting Happiness
Can the achievement of happiness be predicted in any meaningful sense? Simply put, yes it can. If you have close (safe, nurturing, comforting) personal relationships and fulfilling work to do, and you know yourself and what you are about, you can predict that you will have enough good things in your life to bring you lasting happiness. No life is without conflict, pain or even moments of fear, but overall happiness counter-balances all the trials and challenges life hands you. If you have those things working in your life that generate a bone-deep level of happiness you have an automatic cushion against getting bounced on your ear by the unexpected.
Predicting happiness is about building a life for yourself around what feeds the person you are, from your home and family to your work or career to those qualities that define the essence of your humanity. The better you are at knowing yourself, understanding what positively motivates and inspires you, and creating a balance for yourself between your career/work life and family/home life, the easier it will be for you to predict that you will live a happy life.
Happiness doesn't just hang out there in the ether, waiting to be picked up like an email. Happiness is part of the fabric of our lives. It radiates from those aspects of our lives that nurture our needs and desires. Of course, this isn't so much about the material needs and desires, though they have a lot of motivational impact on each of us. It's more about what goes on inside our minds and hearts when we face both the good and bad events that challenge our lives.
Think of how much easier it is to get through any crisis and stay balanced when you have your family and friends to support, comfort and encourage you. Think about the relief you feel when a great career move feeds your sense of accomplishment in spite of a personal disagreement with someone you care about. And remember when you had the opportunity to look at how you are managing the changes in your life and you realize that you have faced them with flexibility and grace. These are the predictors that indicate you can, and will, move past the negatives and live an overall happy life.
Over the years, looking at how people handle the changes, challenges and opportunities life throws at them, I've seen three striking predictors emerge that can forecast whether someone is now and will continue to be a happy person.
Readers love action items/bullet points. Maybe these could be formatted something like this:
- First, the person who displays a sense of gratitude for their life, for every minute they get to spend doing what they do, lives with the knowledge that their life has a purpose , is productive and contributes to the universe in a meaningful way. Yes, I did say the “universe,” because purpose is more than a self-centered thing: it is grounded in our interaction with people in circumstances outside of ourselves.
- Second, the person who shares their life with others and is open to every experience they possibly can have (the good, the bad and the ugly) creates an environment of contentment and fulfillment , which leads to happiness for themselves and their friends and loved-ones.
- Third, someone who feeds the universe with their creative inspiration , bringing beauty into the world basks in the beauty, happiness and fulfillment that reflect back on them.
It's easy to predict that happiness fills people who live like this, and it's a good example of how each of us can create lives that, by their very nature and structure, allow us to predict our own happiness.
Give these suggestions a try. You, too, can create a happy and fulfilled life.
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Lifestyle Mentor, Personal Coach, Author, Educator, and Entrepreneur, David B. Bohl is the creator of Slow Down Fast.
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