Contents
Step 78: “Happiness is not the result of chance, it is the result of strategy”
Psychology
In this chapter of “The 88 steps of happy people” I invite you to be aware that if you want happiness, you must invest in happiness
When I planned my vacation Years ago these used to turn out to be pretty boring. When I listened to my friends relate theirs, they always seemed to be fascinating. I never understood why hers ended up being so funny and mine didn’t. One day I discovered a precious principle that solved my doubt: If you spend two hours planning a vacation, it will be worth two. But if you invest ten, they will be worth ten. The only thing that differentiated their vacations from mine was the hours of planning that each one invested. No more no less. How simple This same principle also applies to the field of happiness and Inner Success.
Hopefully this Step will be a big brick for you and as a result of it you will make a decision that seems obvious to everyone, but is nonetheless not implemented by almost anyone: make your happiness a priority. Why? Why happiness is not arrived at by chance, but deliberately. It is not the result of chance. It is the result of strategy.
If we asked a large number of people if they think they will be happier in a year or in five or ten years, the vast majority would answer yes. For them I have terrible news, and that is that their answer is wrong. Why are they going to be happier? Why does life get better on its own? There is nothing to guarantee that the future trajectory, theirs, yours and mine, will lead to greater happiness in not one year or five or ten. Unless we expressly invest in correct that trajectory.
If you have not read my other books, it is likely that when you read this one you will be left with the idea that I only talk about topics of Inner Success, but the funny thing is that most of the conferences that they request are still on topics of exterior success, such as sales, negotiation, company culture, magnetic leaders and, especially, entrepreneurship. In this last field, when I give talks to entrepreneursThere is a question that I always ask them about the business they want to set up: “Does the field in which this business is framed constitute a growing or decreasing market?” If you want to invest in a tobacco vending machine business, it is most likely a shrinking market, as people are smoking less and less. If, on the other hand, it is a gym business, it will be growing, as people are increasingly concerned about sports and health. This principle that applies to business also applies to the field of happiness.
Just as an entrepreneur has to analyze whether the field in which he wants to undertake is going to go more or less, we have to analyze whether what we invest in our person, in our being, in our mind, makes us go less or more .
Here are three questions as a reflection on how to increase happiness and three answers as a recommendation to achieve it.
Reflection 1. What information do you put into your brain? Information that adds or information that subtracts?
Reflection 2. Do you associate with people who increase or reduce your inner development?
Reflection 3. Do you spend a lot of time on self-analysis and introspection or little?
Recommendation 1. Invest in happiness by deliberately choosing to change a television series that gives you little or nothing in favor of Internet videos that enhance your interior. Invest in books and courses that they do for you. Choose what information will enter your brain from today and what will not.
Recommendation 2. Invest in happiness by choosing which people to interact with more from today and with which to relate less. One of the best tools to grow is through osmosis, that is, the influence infected (by other people). I share with you a personal revelation… At the moment I am writing from Colombia. I came not for the country, which is beautiful, but to deliberately spend time with friends that I grow up with every time we spend time together.
Recommendation 3. Invest in happiness by being tremendously aware of when the ego, your greatest enemy, acts. For this, it is necessary to create non-negotiable spaces of time to dedicate to a single topic: YOU. Working introspection is working on self-knowledge. Working on self-knowledge is working on your Inner Success.
# 88
@Angel