3 Effective exercises to clearly understand your happiness.

I think this article might be useful to a whole lot of people. Have you ever wanted a clear cut way of figuring out what you really want from life?

Well, with the following strategies, you will be able to see what you really cherish and therefore become more efficient in achieving them.

Here’s the first exercise:

Exercise 1) The Lottery experiment

This can be a somewhat bittersweet experiment, but it helps you really get to the nitty gritty of your goals and values.
Grab a piece of paper or start a new note on your phone.
Imagine you have just won the highest Euromillions jackpot (as of writing) of £184m.
Now spend the next few days thinking about what you’d do.
After you grind to a halt with ideas or start getting bored, have a look over the items/actions in the list and use that to boil them down into simpler concepts – for example: “buy a lamborghini” could be “I want to go on track days” or you could want to travel the world or donate large sums of money in a philanthropic style to a variety of causes. The essence of these things can be enjoyed, you don’t have to live life with these as the end goal – if you want to donate to charity, then do it now.

Exercise 2) “Likes list”

A likes list is an A4 list of things that…wait for it…you like!
It seems such a simple thing to do, but being able to view a big list of things that make you happy can be a great resource in life.
It really is that simple; when you’re feeling dejected then just get the list out and perhaps try one from the list.
Things on my list include: Bubble teas, sushi, VR gaming, science, scuba diving, sunny weather and driving. The list, so far, is about 40 items long and currently growing.

Exercise 3) The “Double inspiration” board

The double inspiration board is an adaptation to the usual boards you might see.
An inspiration board, again, is what it says on the tin…it’s a page or pin-up board with images of things that inspire you – note: inspiration is NOT motivation, motivation is for when you don’t want to do something, but you know you should. Inspiration is for when you want to do something but don’t feel the excitement or passion for the task in question.
Motivation is what gets you in the gym, habit (and the fear of losing gains) is what keeps you in the gym, and inspiration is what keeps going to the gym fresh and enjoyable.
A double inspiration board is like a Heaven/Hell board – One side shows what could be if you accomplished what you set out to do, the other is a state of fugue and staleness that is so scarily dull it gives you a fright.
It is good to have a board that makes you happy to look at, and that is exactly what an inspiration board does, but at the risk of giving you a false sense of accomplishment – much like telling other people your goals can lower your chances of succeeding with them, an inspiration board can boost your mood but without boosting productivity.
When you glance over in this state of positivity at the “anti-inspiration” board then you get a sharp wakeup call to remind you to get into action or you’ll just be daydreaming, waiting for the vision board to materialise. This is a big downfall of people who follow a certain book’s teachings on manifesting reality – I can’t tell you the book’s name, it’s a secret!

Conclusion:

I think these 3 exercises are incredibly helpful in finding what means the most to you and what your goals are, and in which domains of your life these goals reside; family, friends, financial, adrenaline seeking, adventuring, novelty, health, purpose finding etc.

Whilst I don’t think by all means I have found my “purpose” I do feel as if I am going forward in life in a direction that will land me at my goals sooner than if I had not gone through vast amounts of trial, error and website trawling.

I suppose one good thing has come out of my 10hrs of mobile phone screen time per day, and that is this site.

Note: don’t do what I did, it’s kind of like taking drugs in order to understand the rehab process better – learn from others who have already done the journey and made it out of the other side, that way you will have saved yourself a LOT of time and hardship.