The book I chose for this project was The Happiness Equation by Neil Pasricha. This book focused on how you can change your perspective, and strategies to be happier. The equation for happiness the title refers to is WANT NOTHING + DO ANYTHING = HAVE EVERYTHING. Along with this equation, the book offers 9 secrets to help you achieve the goal of happiness.
9 SECRETS TO HAPPINESS
BE HAPPY FIRST
GREAT WORK → BIG SUCCESS → BE HAPPY ❌
BE HAPPY → GREAT WORK → BIG SUCCESS ✅
Prioritize your happiness. You only have one life so don’t wait until later to be happy… be happy now!
DO IT FOR YOU
You should do things because you are intrinsically motivated to do so. Don’t make decisions based on how you think other people react or what they will think, but instead do things because YOU want to.
REMEMBER THE LOTTERY
Everyone on this planet has won the lottery. The odds of being alive are so infinitesimally small that it is nothing short of a miracle that we are here let alone all the privileges we have. Live your life as if you’ve already won the lottery.
NEVER RETIRE
You should never stop learning, changing, and growing. Having a purpose in life is incredibly important, and finding things that we love to do and are passionate about give us purpose. Do NOT give these things up.
OVERVALUE YOU
The average lifespan is 70 years. A third of this is spent sleeping which means you are left with 400,000 hours to spend in your life. Overvalue what you want to do in life and how you want to spend your time, as it is much more valuable than money.
CREATE SPACE
Take time to be by yourself and completely unplug from the world. Time spent with little thinking or doing helps us recover from all the stresses and pressures in life. Taking time to recover will help you have the strength to overcome negativity and remain positive.
JUST DO IT
Action causes motivation not the other way around. Do not wait for the motivation or the “right” time to do what you want to do. Just do it.
BE YOU
You never know who might love the person you’re hiding. Be unrelentingly and unforgivingly yourself. You only have one life… don’t waste it trying to live someone else’s. There has only been one you, so embrace who you are because you have a lot to offer the world.
DONT TAKE ADVICE
Do not worry about what other people think. You know what to do for you, so listen to how you feel inside.
GOALS
My goals for this project were to change my preconceived conceptions of what it meant to be happy. I took this project as an opportunity to look inward and figure out how I can become a happier person. When I saw the list of books I immediately knew that The Happiness Equation was the book to help me achieve this goal. The entirety of this book is filled with ideas and strategies that helped me become an overall happier person. The strategies which stuck out to me to implement into my life were three walks, random acts of kindness, and five gratitudes.
3 WALKS
It is scientifically proven that the more physically active you are the more feelings of excitement and enthusiasm you have. Exercise makes you feel better physically and mentally. Exercise releases endorphins, which trigger a positive feeling in the body similar to morphine. Exercise can also help you feel better about yourself because you can start to see positive changes in your body.
The book discusses a study that demonstrated three thirty-minute walks a week is enough to improve recovery from clinical depression. I implemented this in my life by trying to exercise at least three times per week, whether it was going to the gym or going and doing something active with my friends like basketball, rock climbing, or racquetball.
RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS
Performing five random acts of kindness can dramatically improve our happiness. When we put positivity into the world, it will give it back. People may not reciprocate the act of kindness, but it will make you feel good which is enough of a reward. I tried to do little things for my friends and complete strangers such as giving compliments, paying for food, or even something as little as smiling and holding a door for someone. It was amazing how good you can make someone else feel just by smiling when you walk past them.
FIVE GRATITUDES
This strategy was by far the most beneficial to my overall happiness. The five gratitudes strategy from the book says to write down five things you’re grateful for every day no matter how big or small they are. By focusing on what you have in life you realize you have more than enough. Another important idea from the book along these lines was about “the war between more and enough.” People who focus on what they have versus focusing on what else they “need” and what other people have are significantly happier and feel more content with life. I kept a journal by my bed in which I wrote my five gratitudes.
TRACKING
Throughout this project, I tracked my moods using Daylio, a mood tracking app. Since tracking how my perspectives on happiness have changed would be very difficult to demonstrate, this was the best alternative. A feature on the Daylio app also allowed me to track when I exercised.
TAKEAWAYS
I feel the data from the tracking app does not fully describe the changes I have experienced throughout this process. Implementing the strategies and ideas from the book into my daily life has made me significantly happier. More importantly, it has made me a much more grateful person. Gratitude is something that is independent of happiness. You can be grateful when you are sad, or angry, or stressed. Being grateful is what leads to happiness, and that is what I have realized throughout this project. You don’t start with being happy; you have to first do things that will eventually make you happy. Happiness is something that is the result of other actions. By doing things like exercise, random acts of kindness, and keeping a gratitude journal, as well as just living life with a more grateful attitude, you set yourself up to bring positivity into your life.
A very important lesson I have learned is that it is not about what happens to you but how you react to it. I know that is very cliche and maybe an oversimplification of how to be happy, but in general, if you try to overcome negative thoughts with positive thoughts and actions, then you can become much happier than you are now. It’s really easy to be negative and there are a lot of things to be negative about in this world, but there is also a lot to be grateful for and that’s what we should focus on.