Want a Happier & More Fulfilling Life? Diversify Your Sources of Happiness
By: Thomas Oppong
Tags: Happiness, Relationships, Self, Psychology

Want a Happier & More Fulfilling Life? Diversify Your Sources of Happiness

Your happiness is your personal responsibility

Happiness or misery is a product of our subjective relationship with expectations and reality. It’s an inside job.

Epictetus once said, “Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.”

Over the long-term, a feeling of contentment, happiness comes down to embracing the objective reality of life, leveraging what’s in your control and letting go of too many illusions.

“The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another,” says Adam Smith. Learning how to adjust your expectations can change your approach to life.

Viktor Frankl, author of the best-selling book, Man’s Search for Meaning says two of the most important values in life are the experiential, or that which happens to us and the attitudinal, or our response in difficult situation.

Life is a moving current — there will always be obstacles that challenge our emotional stability. No one has the privilege of being free from the burdens of life and living it, but there are things you can do and a mindset you can adopt to keep moving and still make the most of what life throws at you.

Regardless of your current trajectory on life, the means to a rewarding and fulfilling life is possible. Anyone can learn to do more of what can guarantee fulfilment and happiness.

Unexpected sources of happiness

The only way not to fall into the misery trap is to expand your sources of happiness and decrease your sources of misery.

It’s that simple — loosen your fixation on what makes you happy and do more of what makes you come alive. Learn to develop the flexibility to reshape your sources of happiness.

Investors are great at diversification — it’s one of the golden rules of investing. It’s never safe to put all your eggs in the same basket. It’s also generally not wise to rely on just a single income stream if you work for yourself. The risk of loss becomes too high.

In life, we all have a limited amount of time and energy to spend. And there are so many unimportant things that want your attention ( be ruthless in eliminating those things). Investing your time in things that can bring you joy can indirectly help you avoid a life of misery.

Many people wait for something to happen or someone to make them happy.

In many cases of unhappiness, people experience difficult circumstances that create paradigm shifts, whole new frames of reference by which they see the world and themselves and others in it, and what life is asking of them.

When this happens, they can easily expect something or someone to make them happy. Explore your values, priorities, and the lifestyle you want and adopt habits and routines that can help you design your own happiness.

Take it slow — you can choose the one idea at a time to feel the most impact on your life. Focus on adopting the new mindset and see how it works for you.

Jim Taylor, PhD recommends you ask yourself the following questions — “What do you value most in your life? What aspects of your life do you want as your priorities? What kind of life do you want to lead in the short term and in the future, say, in 10+ years? What do you want your life to be filled with (e.g., marriage, children, travel, health and exercise, culture)?”.

The good news is, a single individual or thing should not be the sole reason for your happiness and fulfilment in life. When you leave your happiness in someone else’s hands, you’ll end up being dependent on them and when they disappoint you, you’ll become empty inside.

There are many factors that may influence happiness — outlook in life, a comfortable standard of living, great relationships, new adventures, pursuing creative and meaningful goals and skilled and meaningful activities.

To find out what works best for you, create your own personal list of “sources of happiness” and save it in your favourite note-taking app. Then, the next time you are feeling down, you have a bunch of powerful different choices to draw from when you need that extra boost to keep you going every day.

It pays to build deeper relationships, it’s also important to build routines and other personal but fulfilling activities that can help you avoid a life of misery.

It’s incredibly important to find sources of happiness in your life that aren’t tied to people or stuff because it’s much easier to lose that happiness when they are gone. Take advantage of all the sources of happiness in your life.

Your happiness is your personal responsibility. You have the ability to control your own emotions. Do not let anything or anyone rob you from your own happiness. When your happiness is in the hands of other people, they determine when you can be happy.

Choose to do more experiential activities that’ll bring you joy for as long they are not detrimental to your long-term happiness.