The Formula For Happiness

1.  Decide.

2.  Deconstruct it into basic parts to research.

3.  Search and discover the answer  to learn these parts.

4.  Practice learning to do these parts.

5.  Make a pre-commitment.

If I told you, you could have immense success with finding happiness by working for it 20 minutes a day, twice a day for a month, would you try the experiment?  Would you be willing and able to make this pre-commitment?

Decide

Do you want to be happy?  Be specific, I want to be healthy, wealthy and wise.  There are sub skills to these basic parts.  To be healthy you need a good sleep, eat well, and exercise on the regular basis.  To exercise can be emotion, mental and spiritual.  On a basic level, we all need to slow down and smell the roses.  To chit-chat with a friend or a relative can help us sort out our daily problems.  A combination of journal writing and chit-chat can work just as well.

Deconstruct your desire to be happy into parts.

Everyone wants to be happy.  The basic problem is to practice the good habit or doing the work.  Science proves to most of us the value and worth and how to complete the habit.  How do I practice the good habits of sleep, eating and exercise?  Basically, it is important to plan for a good sleep.  And to produce the good habit we must learn to adjust to the slips or mistakes that circumstances and poor habits produce in our daily lives.  Adjusting our environment will ease the workload and set us up for a good sleep every night.  You know, unplug the gadgets and phone, draw the curtains, don’t eat in bed, get to sleep at a decent hour.  If you don’t know, research ‘how to’.

It may sound overly simplistic to practice these skills and master the habits to meet our core needs.  Psychology today is very exact.  It says we need a list of things to strive and thrive.  One is to self-actualize or practice being who we are.

Some people have a good understanding of who they are.  That can be encapsulated by the ancient philosophy of Epictetus.  Know Thyself or work within our limits.  Skim through the book for a better understanding of this concept or any concept.  Again, it is hard to believe this basic concept is part of such a basic need for life.  Yet, this skill is essential for happiness.

It Is Easy To Do.

Now all these good habits can be found in a basic text of psychology.  The realization that we use these habits everyday is obvious.  The simple truth is that we complicate it by trying to do too much or beyond our ability.  We fail to sleep, eat or exercise.  If we are willing to ‘go back to school’ and practice these good habits on the regular basis, we will become happy.

Pre-commit.

Lastly, you need to repeatedly tell yourself to make the sacrifices needed to create these good habits.  One simple method by Author Josh Kaufman is called The First 20 Hours.  I saw him plugging his book on accelerated learning and decided to use the concept to describe happiness.

So, to reiterate, I have been playing a bit of a mind game.  I have used an excellent learning method to help breakdown happiness into basic skill and habits.  I could have said try to be good at performing your basic needs to be happy.  But common sense is obliterated in every age.  Writing is all about framing the truth for everyone to see.  So I brushed off the fleas to convince you to practice good habits.  There are so many truths said in clichés:  life is a gift, time is flitting, sharing is the bond that keeps us all together.  Good luck!