How To Be Happy | FLOW and LIFE Tips
Video transcript below:
Guys, Colin here, The Wild CEO.
We have one of my favorite books, Flow, a trendy book about happiness and Flow states and things like that. And it's a must-read for everyone, but I will review it quickly. The first page and what he is talking about is for happiness goals, and this is more of a video about getting you to think.
Okay, please think about what he's saying here. So let's start with the introduction. This is the introduction on page one.
Three hundred years ago, Aristotle concluded that more than anything else, men and women seek happiness. While happiness is, every other goal, health, beauty, money, or power, is valued only because we expect it to make us happy.
Much has changed since Aristotle's time. Our understanding of the world's sorrow and atoms has expanded beyond belief.
The gods of the Greeks were like helpless children compared to humankind today and the powers we now wield, and yet, on the most critical issue, very little has changed in the intervening centuries.
We do not understand what happens any better than Aristotle did, and as for learning how to attain the blessed condition, we can argue that we have not made any progress.
People are unhappy. It takes a lot of work to find comfortable.
It's a seleucid idea that everyone thinks we're striving for, and we pursue it by having more things and being…living in a consumer society, and having a bigger car and having to have a Tesla or house and having to have these things that are based on other people like social media and likes and comments.
Who has the most followers? Right? Because that's going to be a value of our worth.
And then you get into things like comparison effects which make us even more unhappy, so today, please think about the things you're spending a lot of time on in your day that you're chasing that might not be bringing you the results you want, like…
Think about the number of people who have a job that they hate. Yeah, okay. They have the job because they've got to pay the bills, but they could find something else, and even if it meant taking a pay cut for a while, they could work into something else they enjoy a lot more.
Or work for a different company, a different boss, or whatever it is. Yet, they're too attached to the things that their jobs give them, and it's more of a fear of loss than it is a fear of fulfillment or a genuine fear of bliss and happiness because a lot of times, you have to tear off those band-aids, and you have to find the winding path to happiness.
It's sometimes indirect. It's not always the thing you're doing now.
Tragically, people spend so much of their life pursuing happiness either through a job they hate or maybe a second relationship they don't value but are afraid of being lonely; their self-worth is somehow tied to that relationship.
So many examples of things we do as humans are different from what we should be doing. They need to be more counterintuitive to our goal.
Our goal is to be happy. Yet we do things that make us miserable. Like, why? Why is that?
Alright, there are a lot of reasons why and there are like a million books and topics and rabbit holes we could go down, but today, please think about, in your life, how you can eliminate things that bother you and make you unhappy, and that you don't want to do.
That's the number one thing. If bees are tackling you, you need to find shelter before you worry about a job. Right?
So you must figure out how to mitigate those things in your life that are the bees buzzing around you, constantly stinging you, before you focus on the more important, other things that will lead to happiness.
So the number one thing for most people is permanently eliminating as much drama, eliminating as many toxic people, and eliminating as much of the struggle of life, many times, people's jobs, from their life as possible. Find out solutions for those things.
Then work on self-actualization for other things like finding a side project you like to do or finding ways to spend more time with your family, or just finding ways to be in the present, get your health on track, and things like that.
Call action today. Eliminate those bees in your life that are swarming around and stinging you.
Do what you can to eliminate those, and then think about the bigger picture, where you want to go, what you are doing, and working towards something.
Is your work fulfilled? Are you being fulfilled by your relationships? By your friends?
Are you spending enough time with friends or with your family? Are you putting them off because you think you need to pursue money because you feel that will make you happy? Whatever is it, alright?
So I hope you think about this today. We have to take action to be happy.
Like he talks about in Flow. He says those who find optimal experiences that are the happiest in life and the most chances to be satisfied take action to do that. It doesn't just happen.
He says it doesn't just happen. You don't just get lucky. You're not just born happy naturally.
It would help if you took action to control your life and environment, and that's how you can find happiness.
Founder/CEO, Wild Foods