The Pillars Of Contentment – Building A Foundation For A Happy Life provides you with practical and easy to follow information on how to start leading a more happy life. The article is based on government studies, psychology, science, philosophy, and experience.
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This how to be happy guide is not meant to cure depression. If you are seriously depressed please ask for help. You are worth it! You deserve to be happy!
“The difference between depression and joy is purpose. When you wake up in the morning, and your life means something to somebody other than you, then you have a purpose. If you don’t go do the thing you’re going to do then people’s lives will suffer. I think that kind of purpose, to live in service of humanity, to your family, your city, the world, I feel that is the purest form of joy.” – Will Smith Quotes
How To Be Happy According To The Professionals
RECOMMENDED BOOKS ON HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS – These books are excellent resources that helped inspire How To Be Happy – The Practical Guide
The Pillars Of Contentment – Building A Foundation For A Happy Life – Cheat Sheet
These areas are the core of learning how to be happy
1) Meaningful job, educational path, or personal interest
2) Realistic, meaningful plan for the future
3) Exercise
4) Relationships
5) Time in Nature
6) Health, Diet and Nutrition
7) Relaxation and Stress Management
8) Contribution and Service
9) Recreation and fun
10) Learn And Grow Mindset
Bonus: Activities Examples that Cover Multiple Pillars – Sports, Playing a Musical Instrument, Chess
The Pillars Of Contentment – Building A Foundation For A Happy Life Explained
The basic foundation to build a content and happy life. You don’t have to hit all of the sub areas, they are simply suggestions on ways to meet each criteria. Many activities include multiple, or even all of the pillars. Listed below on each top are resources that could help you. Each section is certainly not complete. My goal is to provide information to help you understand and build each pillar.
1) Meaningful job, educational path, serious personal interest, or a combination.
Recommended Books:
- Think And Grow Rich – By Napoleon Hill
- What Color Is Your Parachute? 2017: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers – by Richard N. Bolles
- 80,000 Hours: Find a fulfilling career that does good – by Benjamin J Todd – 80,000 Hours Website and Resources
- Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Second Edition – By Kerry Patterson
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change – By Stephen Covey
Having a job gives you a purpose, helps you keep your sleep patterns in check, and helps you maintain the minimum or more economic resources.
Seek Experiences Over Money and Objects
Money only makes you happy to a point according to:
Everything you need to know about whether money makes you happy.
Buying objects provides brief happiness.
Experiences however can actually grow in value. Also, having experiences can work towards other Pillars Of Contentment such as socializing.
2) Realistic, meaningful plan for the future
Recommended Resources:
Self Authoring
It is not the critic who counts;
not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,
or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
who strives valiantly; who errs,
who comes short again and again,
because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;
but who does actually strive to do the deeds;
who knows great enthusiasms,
the great devotions;
who spends himself in a worthy cause;
who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,
and who at the worst,
if he fails,
at least fails while daring greatly,
so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
– Theodore Roosevelt
Long Term Plans
Imagine you were taking care of yourself like you were someone you were actually trying to care for. I’m caring for this person, I want their life to go as well as possible. What would their life have to be like for that to be the case? – Jordan Peterson
Create a meaningful plan for yourself of how you’d like your life to be. What would you want your story look like in three years?
Almost all the positive emotion that any of you are likely to experience in your life will not be a consequence of attaining things it, it will be a consequence of seeing that things are working as you proceed towards a goal you value. – Jordan Peterson
Short Term Plans
In addition to long term plans, create short term plans. This can include weekend plans and day to day plans. Try to plan in something fun so that you can look forward to it. You don’t necessarily need to follow through, but simply having the plan and having something to look forward to can make a world of difference.
Systems Vs Goals
Instead of focusing on daily goals, focus on a system that automatically helps take care of those goals. For example creating a schedule. Having a system can greatly help with your self discipline.
“Self discipline is twice the determinate of success compared to intelligence.”
3) Exercise
There is an incredible amount of research that reinforces the positive impact of exercise such as stress relief, self esteem boosting, improved blood pressure, lower risk of heart disease and stroke, cognitive improvement, weight loss, etc. There are so many benefits and the great news is that it doesn’t have to be spending hours at the gym. Even simply going for a 30 minute daily walk has massive benefits over not working out at all.
Sports are a great way to workout because you get exercise while having fun, and socializing.
4) Relationships
Recommended Books:
Self / Personal Relationship
How do you talk to yourself? How do you treat yourself? Do your best, weed out the bad stuff, be supportive of yourself, listen to yourself over others.
King of yourself – Vision, Speech, and willingness to explore the unknown
Have a positive mindset and relationship with yourself
Treat yourself like you’d want someone to treat you
Think Good, Be Good, Do Good
Be humble. Kill the ego.
Social Relationships
Try to find at least five friends, including at least one or two people that you can really talk. Be Proactive, not reactive. Move beyond small talk.
Romantic Relationships
Work towards a close, intimate, romantic relationship. This subject alone has countless books and websites so it will not be expanded on much here.
Meetup.com and dating sites are great ways to meet people.
The Four Agreements
From The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book) – Reading this book is highly recommended.
1. Be Impeccable with your Word:
- Speak with integrity.
- Say only what you mean.
- Avoid using the Word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others.
- Use the power of your Word in the direction of truth and love.
2. Don’t Take Anything Personally:
- Nothing others do is because of you.
- What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream.
- When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.
3. Don’t Make Assumptions:
- Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want.
- Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama.
- With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.
4. Always Do Your Best:
- Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick.
- Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.
5) Time in Nature
We increasingly spend our lives in artificial environments— walled inside and divorced from nature. Within these nature-free settings, noise is often annoying, and lighting is often artificial, of low intensity (often less than 10% of the light intensity on sunny days), and composed of nonnatural spectra and rhythms. As the burgeoning field of environmental psychology demonstrates, the psychological costs of such settings can be wide-ranging.
These costs include disruptions of mood, sleep, and diurnal rhythms. Cognitive costs include short-term impairment of attention and cognition as well as long-term reduced academic performance in the young and greater cognitive decline in the elderly. Further psychological difficulties occur in special populations such as those with Alzheimer’s disease and postsurgical patients.
– Roger Walsh
6) Health, Diet and Nutrition
Recommended Books:
Eating properly and taking care of your health can make a world of difference. Eating properly can significantly boost your energy and quality of life. Also it helps to improve your health and help you live longer. Making sure you take care of your health in general is a major factor to being happy.
Lots to expand on this area.
Bulletproof Diet, list of 31 core
Importance of diet as said by Roger
7) Relaxation and Stress Management
Recommended Books:
Good books on meditation, writing, etc (Stephen King on writing?)
Activity Ideas:
Meditation – HUGE
Yoga
Playing and listening to music (especially classical) – HUGE
Reading – HUGE
Writing (Especially journal for stress) – HUGE
Stressball
Do fun stuff (Recreation) (Plan for this daily)
Gratitude List (study from Perma) – HUGE
8) Contribution and Service
Helping people can make you feel happy. You could volunteer or simply help an old lady cross the road or hold a door. A little bit can go a long way and you can completely change someone’s day and their life by showing a small amount of care. And the best part is it makes you happy as well.
This story is a great example of someone deemed a failure finding purpose through helping:
How Teaching A Fellow Inmate To Read Changed “No. 1 draft bust in NFL history” Ryan Leaf’s Life To The Positive
9) Recreation and fun
Having time dedicated to having fun is a very important way to de-stress and bring extra happiness to your life. It is very important to schedule time for fun to balance out the rigors of the work life. Recreation can be a great chance to get more socializing in as well.
Activity Ideas – Go for experiences over objects – Money does not buy happiness
Creating / Art
Sports
Meetups
Events – Local and
The importance of creating a weekend (daily too?) plan even if you don’t end up doing it
10) Learn and Growth Mindset
Recommended Books:
Fixed vs Growth Mindset According To Positive Psychology
The Fixed-Mindset aim is to achieve validation. The person constantly tries to prove himself, and is highly sensitive to being wrong or making a mistake. Failure brings doubt, demeans character, and destroys confidence. As a result, a person with a fixed-mindset, always feels anxious and is vulnerable to setbacks or criticisms.
The Growth-Mindset is about achieving mastery and competence. The person believes that superb personal qualities can be learned, developed or cultivated. Failure is only feedback about performance, not a judgement of personality, potential or value. A person with growth-mindset is eager to learn to boost performance and enjoys exploring, experimenting and stretching limits. Criticism and setbacks have little negative impact.
Disclaimer
I am not a medical professional and none of what I have written should be regarded as professional medical advice. This guide is not meant to instantly bring you happiness and be an all inclusive solution.
The intent is to help you build a foundation for a successful and happy future and to provide you the resources to further explore the subject. I highly recommend exploring the subject matter using the links to the professional resources provided.
The Pillars Of Contentment – Building A Foundation For A Happy Life article is based on the research of Psychologists Dr. Jordan Peterson, Dr. Roger Walsh, Brené Brown,Dr. Russ Harris with slight hints of the PERMA model.