THE "SECRET" OF HAPPINESS - PART II

(practical steps included below)

There is one sentence I read a long time ago, that stuck with me to this day. This sentence resurfaced throughout my life, and was the spark in my quest to research and understand human happiness.

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

This sentence makes us ponder about our capacity for happiness, as Tolstoy's novel doesn't actually reveal any perfectly happy families. Like the family I grew up in, the families he portrayed were torn by financial problems and quarrels.

Was Tolstoy right? Are all happy people happy in the same way? Are all unhappy people unhappy in different ways? How do they differ from happy ones? These were the questions at the start of my research.

I interviewed 26 people in total. Roughly half of them consider themselves happy, and the other half consider themselves less happy.

Here is how those who rated themselves as happy talk about their life:
- "I LOVE MY LIFE, though it’s not always fun or easy. I love the future. I'd love to do more of what I'm doing now." 
- "I’m SATISFIED with what I’m doing. There are moments when I feel elated. I'm happy when I spend time doing what I want to accomplish, surround myself with inspiring people."
- "I’m wouldn’t want to change anything about my life.Though I'd like to make more money with my business."
- "I’m HAPPY – I have long term life goals, I always check what am I up to, how am I progressing on goals I set for myself."
- “I KNOW WHO I AM, what you see is what you get, I don’t lie, I don’t do anything wrong. I try to live the best I can. If I am true to yourself, that’s what makes me happy. If you always do what’s right, you will be happy. But you have to find what makes you happy. "

Say it with me. "You have to find out what makes YOU happy." This is where it gets interesting.

While all happy people are indeed happy in the same way (they love their life as is), they each go about living their life in different ways. The happy people I quoted above are: startup founder, medical doctor, musician, theater production owner, restaurant owner, engineer, investor. From the outside, they look different. From the inside, they're similar. All our souls want the same thing: peace and harmony.

How did happy people get where they are? The're two deceivingly simple steps:
(1) They did the hard work to LEARN what makes them happy. 
(2) Then, they had the desire to TAKE ACTION.
Each of these steps are incredibly complicated, I found out for myself. Take #1. Some of us spend a lifetime to answer the simple yet fundamental question of - what is my purpose? What makes me happy? What can do to add meaning to my life? What are my unique talents? [In the next post I'll go deeper into the *how* to go about in order to find what makes you happy. ]

Suffice to say for now that the happy people I interviewed, have each done a lot of work to understand what gives their life meaning, eventually learned what they love to spend their time on, and what makes them feel fulfilled. I also found that a better question than "are you happy?" sometimes is "do you love your life?". More on this at a later post.

You're probably someone who's already been asking these type of questions, given that you're reading this post right now. And maybe you already applied that knowledge to understand yourself. Maybe you already know what brings you and doesn't bring you happiness. If this is you, you've faced your fears, you failed a few times, and you saw past your fears and self doubts. You're in touch with your core. Maybe you already have a vision.

Let's look at step #2. Having the knowledge of what makes you happy is very useful. But you have to ACT on it. When we are taught the what is right and what is wrong, we are expected to remember it and know it. But most importantly, we are expected to have the desire and discipline to act on that knowledge.
When I first started the research I thought happiness is all about acquiring knowledge. The more people I interviewed, the more I realized that happiness is about action.

One of the happier people I interviewed told me the story of how he got to be a musician. He studied philosophy and later was accepted into one of the top Law schools in the country. He was on track to become a lawyer. And yet he decided to pull out. He had learned enough about himself to know that as much as he wanted to be a working lawyer, he loved playing music more. He decided to give up up a lucrative law career to spend the bulk of his days playing and composing music, and teaching music to support himself financially.

"Real happiness - what did it cost you and how much did you commit to it?" he said, as he talked about the tough choice he had to make early in life.

This was a big a-ha for me. Actions speak louder than words. . If we want to be happy, we have to learn what makes us happy, but most importantly, we need to take action and live our life according to that knowledge. So if we know that our current career or life choices don't make us happy, we can't continue in that direction. We have to get centered. We have to let go of actions that don't support our values. We have to take actions that do align with our values. We have to do what we know it's the right for us.

This is where happiness comes clearer into focus, and it becomes simpler in a way. Let's be honest. We all INHERENTLY KNOW what we value and what makes us happy. We're all fully and equally capable to learn to read our own soul.

It takes incredible DISCIPLINE to be honest and to resist what others tell us is right for us. Only we know what's true for us. The goal is the same for all of us - to be happy. The path to get there is different for all of us. I think this is what Tolstoy meant. There are so many ways different ways to be unhappy.

I wish I knew then what I know now. After that interview, meant for me learn about others, I stopped and thought about how I had spent the bulk of my life until that point. In my 20s, my sole purpose was to get education and find a well paying job. I didn't think I had the luxury to wonder what made me happy.

As an immigrant to US, my main goal was to survive, to be financially secure. Once I secured a job, my main purpose was finding love. Then in my 30s, I wanted to make enough money to support our family. We bought a house in SF. In my mid-thirties, as I fulfilled all those basic needs, I actually began to feel less and less satisfied.

I remember thinking "I wish someone would tell me what I have to do." I kept thinking "there is more to life than this", you know? Once I realized that I had stopped learning on my job and that I wasn't excited about a promotion, I stopped took a while to find out who I really am as a person. I eventually quit my corporate career despite how lucrative it was, because I realized I didn't feel happy helping big companies get bigger. In my early 40s, I'm finally doing my life's work. I'm doing now what my friend the musician did in his early 20s.

It's difficult to make decisions that involve giving up perceived stability, especially financial one, especially when you have a family. Happiness involves decisions, and each decision changes our destiny.

"It's very difficult to find in the outside world something that matches what the system inside you is yearning for." says Joseph Campbell in "Reflections on the art of living".

As Schopenhauer, the German philosopher says, when you look back on your life, it seems as though it were a plot but when you are into it, it's messy. Then later, you see it was absolutely perfect, that it all makes sense, and that you had to experience everything you've been through, to get here.

"If you are on your own path things are going to come to you. Since it's your own path, and no one has ever been on it before, there is no precedent, so everything that happens is a surprise and is untimely" says Campbell.