Are you searching for happiness but almost at a loss for where to start? Here is a simple starting point to understanding your happiness.
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What makes you smile or laugh out aloud?
Have you ever made a happiness list, listing the little everyday things right through to the big moments?
What would turn up on your list?
Is your happiness in that new shirt you just bought or in a new jet ski? Actually is it in any of those new ‘items’ you seem to keep buying?
Or is it the things you cannot buy; the items summed up as experiences, including time with friends and family.
It may help to make an extensive list of all the things that make you happy and content with life, all your favourites, from the big holidays to the everyday cup of coffee.
Then think about all your purchases of non-essential items over the past few months, and, consider how you have spent your precious spare time.
Does the list look anything like your recent past reality?
Is there material ‘perceived’ happiness cluttering your real happiness? After all if you are working to earn money for non-essential extras that you are accumulating, then you are also spending time maintaining, cleaning and need to own extra space to house these items.
This is all a bit of a buzz as part of the minimalism craze sweeping around, but you don’t have to completely reshape your life, you can just start with a list, a refocus and manage your time going forward with a clearer view.
A good quote George Carlin said that might help in your re-evaluation is“…trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body”.
There is also no right or wrong answer to your happiness and you know what, if a new shirt gives you the uplift that makes you happy there is nothing wrong with that.
If you can do the hard work and understand what adds value to your life, what makes you happy versus what is habitual in possessions and in how you spend your time, then you can start to focus and bring to fruition more of these happy times in your life.
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Photo: Flickr/Zsolt Botykai
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