image: antica stirpe studio

Happiness comes from spiritual wealth, not material wealth… happiness comes from giving, not getting. If we try to bring happiness to others we cannot stop it from coming to us also. To get joy we must give it, and to keep joy we must scatter it. - John Templeton

When I’ve spoken to people about this they are usually less interested in knowing what happiness is but more concerned about how to get it. This is a very brief introduction.

Factor in that we are each different, unique propositions, what juices one of us wont do it for someone else, but the principles or the criteria for happiness remain the same.

Growth and development is the first and most important stage, the other things follow on from that. Growth and development can be bottom lined as something new. Stretch yourself, put yourself in situations where you have to expand yourself in order to manage it. If this were not a natural state for you to be in you would never have got beyond crawling on the ground or getting a first date.

It is easy to go into autopilot once just enough has been acquired to enable someone to function in the world. The art is to develop an insatiable desire for learning, whether it is new knowledge or new situations and to be constantly expanding one’s horizons in response to that. Human beings, at one level, are learning machines and we excel in situations where we have to stretch to accommodate new learning. Consider all the skills you have developed since you were first born and then ask yourself what they are for. What was the purpose of becoming the accomplished individual that you now are?

We have to prove ourselves upon the anvil of life, we have to put ourselves forward and take knocks when they come but also take our successes, all of this aggregates and gives character to the person that we become. The whole process is one of refining and developing those things which work for us and those things which never get off the ground. In business terms a truly successful organisation reinvests in itself in the form of research and development, it knows that to stand still is potentially fatal. Look at something like Coca Cola, on the face of it it’s just a fizzy drink, carbonated water with some flavours added. Yet it is constantly re-inventing itself and building upon its established successes.

That’s a good model, in principle, to apply to yourself. What do you do well? What are your skills or talents that give you something extra? Pursue and refine these things and you are in the zone. Any business that excels in its field is always looking to develop new products, new services, new ways of doing things, they are constantly seeking to improve and refine their basic package. Now not everyone likes that, their habitual patterns resist change and so they become anachronistic within the organisation. They move on or they get fired, they become surplus to requirement. You are exactly the same but the organisation is you, it’s not individuals that resist change in you but attitudes and views that have not moved on.

So that’s our first key to unlock the enigma of happiness. Always be seeking to grow and develop.

The next is fulfilment. Once you find, through the process of growth and development, something that you love doing you will take satisfaction from that. This leads to fulfilment. Fulfilment is the state of being meaningfully and purposefully engaged with something that attracts a greater sense of well-being. It’s a little like being a TV receiver, when it gets switched on it connects to a network and that transmits a signal that the set translates as images and sounds. Without being connected the TV set is just a box.

Without fulfilment a human being is just going through the motions. They are connected to a system that animates them, their heart beats, they eat, sleep and move around but their life lacks that something extra. For each of us, the thing that floats our boat will be different, there is no end to the combination of factors that give rise to fulfilment and satisfaction in any one individual. Some people love music, others love mathematics, others love creating art, solving problems, raising families, building businesses, travelling, creating the ideal home environment. It really is a potentially endless list of possible permutations. The skill in living a life is being able to recognise those things that do it for you and fill your time with them.

Satisfaction  opens doors to parts of your life that otherwise don’t get a look in. How much quality of life can a person who is going through the motions derive when compared to someone who is pushing their own boundaries, engaging in satisfying activities and deriving fulfilment from that? Your senses become heightened, your awareness becomes more acute and you function at a more refined level altogether. Even at the chemical level endorphins and hormones that are nature’s anti depressants get released when you engage with particular kinds of activity that enhance your feeling of well-being.

So here we have illustrated a binary system that offers a platform to a third thing. The exchange between Growth/Development and Satisfaction/Fulfilment summons a third thing which is happiness. If a person is growing and feels fulfilled in what they do then they will be happy as a result. Happiness is not a point, a destination, rather it is a process or a journey. It is a companion that may join you in your life but it is not something you keep in a box in a bank vault.

The three things together, Development/Fulfilment/Happiness, form a dynamo, they interact with one another and draw things to themselves. The individual with this three-fold system active in their life becomes attractive to finer qualities and they place their feet upon an unfolding journey that will deliver inspiration and immense joy to them all their days. There will always be sustenance for someone who has activated this matrix within their own life.