Dan Buettner- A New York Times best-selling authors of many books, he is also an explorer, National Geographic Fellow and award winning journalist who discovered the five places in the world dubbed Blue Zones where people live the longest, healthiest lives.
In the talk show of Marie Forleo, when it comes to happiness, LIFE SATISFACTION, DAILY EMOTIONS AND PURPOSE are 3 most important factors to measure happiness.
✅LIFE SATISFACTION means people evaluate their lives on the scale from 10 to 0, they think about their lives and evaluate whether it is good or not as a whole. Are they happy with their life right now? Do they enjoy it? Are they having fun with it?
✅DAILY EMOTIONS has something to do with daily experiences you have on a consistent basis, in other words, how people get to experience their life since you just remember 2% of your life, you are more likely to remember your high points such as your wedding, the time you got that first job, or the time you got that first child, or your low points such as the time your grandma died, your boyfriend broke up with you, you got dumped by your girlfriend or boyfriend, and what happened in the last 24 hours.
Asking people how they remember their lives isn’t the perfect way to measure wellbeing and happiness because it is too general, but in stead when you ask them “how many times have they smiled? How much have they felt joy? How was their workday during the week? You can get a pretty snapshot of how people experience their lives, either negative or positive.
✅PURPOSE is the final facet of happiness, which means how often people use their strengths to do what they do best. They love doing what they are good at; they do their work with good intention. In other words, they don’t try to gain status, they just purely love what they love doing and that is all.
To get maximum happiness, you have to get balanced those 3 elements, lacking one of those won’t you happy for a long term.
One of the most important things I learned from the talk show is the HAPPINESS RECIPE. The Happiness Recipe includes:
‼️Food
Of course, if you want to be happier, you have to have food to eat everyday, making sure you’re sufficient and cover the most basic need.
‼️Shelter
You also need a house to live, a roof over your head, protecting you from external circumstances and making you feel safe.
‼️Education
At least, you got to have high school diploma to look for jobs that you can do. Higher education would be a bonus point for you.
‼️Satisfying work
Having a satisfying work will make you happier, feeling motivated to wake up everyday to do your best and feel what you do has an impact on people’s lives.
‼️Committed relationships
When you have a relationship, that relationship must be stable and committed between each other, both of you must be happy and accept each other’s flaws and bring out the best in each other.
‼️The feeling of giving back
When you feel what you do is useful to people, by helping out each other and using your generosity to spread your kindness to the world would do the trick.
‼️Where you live or your surroundings
The idea of having the surroundings around you is crucial. It will have a huge impact on your happiness level. For example, if you live in crappy living conditions, surrounded by all the negative people, you are sure 100% can’t be happy and more likely to be affected by those people. But on the contrary, if you live in an environment surrounded by all the positive people, you would be very happy and cheerful since you are inspired by those people and it changed you in some ways.
So if want to be happy, change your environment, at least to some places much better. There are a lot of folks moving to foreign countries such as the USA, Canada just for the sake of having a happier life, since the happiness level in those countries is pretty high, and for such a long time they lived there, their happiness level has increased a lot from 4 to 8 on the scale.
But what if you can’t move to other countries to increase your happiness, you can change the way you approach things. Here are some happiness boosters:
➡️Curate a group of friends who you can have face-to-face interactions, and meaningful conversation with. The amount of face-to-face hours with someone you like is the most important thing in boosting your happiness level.
➡️When it comes to your work life, it is imperative to have one best friend at work who you can schedule “happy hour” to talk to, to share things and who can understand you, even though the rest is cranky but just having once best friend at work can make you feel happy and motivated to go to work everyday without feeling stressed.
Finally, here is the tip from finding your purpose in life: Purpose is the cross section between what your values are, what you like to do, what you’re good at and what you have to give.
Pick a piece of paper and a pen to write down 4 columns of YOUR VALUES, WHAT YOU LIKE TO DO, WHAT YOU’RE GOOD AT & WHAT YOU HAVE TO GIVE with 2 words, see what is the most aligned in each column. And then ask yourself: “Is that why I do my work? Are the people I am surrounding myself with, are they reinforcing what my purpose is?” if the answers are No, then something has to tweak to reinforce your purpose.
So if you want happiness, look for your surroundings and how you can change it to nudge you to the right direction.
=>Watch in full episode at: https://bit.ly/2vMmtuw
Summarized and Written by Tuyet Son
#marieforleo
#danbuettner
