All You Need To Know About Living A Happier Life

“The secret to happiness is freedom. And the secret to freedom is courage.”

— Thucydides

What are you struggling with the most when it comes to your mental health during the pandemic? How to be happy is a damn good place to start.

My friend Tom and I dove into this question on our podcast the Hang And Bang (It's not what you think). We knew it was affecting us, but what about everyone else? Within hours of Tom sharing this question on Instagram, twenty-eight people reminded us that you are never alone. We are all awkward fucking humans trying our best to make sense of the world and just want to be happier in life.

The pandemic is not the villain.

As I flip through the responses I can't help but notice nearly everyone's struggles existed long before we had a chance to blame the crazy world we're living in. The pandemic became a mirror that reflected back a sobering dystopian of disconnection from our core values. We put work, material shit and busyness ahead of our families, our friends and our own sanity.

It's now impossible to ignore the things we hoped would just go away or somehow get better — because everything that feels impossible to change no longer has an over-committed life to hide behind.

Yet, this could be a reason to celebrate. What would you do differently with a blank slate for your life?

It pays to be cautious before you set sail on your new adventure. Is your boat seaworthy? Springing a leak in the middle of the ocean is not an ideal place to make repairs. You want to plug all the holes before you kiss goodbye to land in search of freedom.

You live in a world where endless distractions are the norm. They're like pin-sized leaks that will sink your ship to the bottom of the ocean if you don't spot them early on. Some are of our own making, but others are designed to trap you in a life where your most precious resource is hijacked — your time.

The founding president of Facebook sounded more like a drug dealer when he shared their driving motto: "How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?" He went on to explain the psychological manipulation they use to steal your life minute-by-minute: "And that means we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever."

Social media companies don't want your money, they want your time. This should tell you something about how valuable it actually is.

Without time you have busyness.

Without time you have a life run by anxiety.

Without time you have no happiness.

Without time you have no future.

Without time you have no freedom.

Without time you have a life of regrets because you wish you'd had the courage to live a life true to yourself, not the life others expected of you.

Hear me out before that little voice inside your head tries to convince you that you're not good enough. You know the one I'm talking about, they question who are you to want a better life? Who are you to want to be happier? Who are you to pursue your dreams and desires?

You convincing yourself that it's foolish to pursue your dreams and desires is a selfish act.

You're investing your time into the things that matter because life is bigger than you.

You don't think that if you're living a more fulfilling life that it's going to have a ripple effect? You being happier, healthier and present is literally the foundation blocks in which the world you want to live in is built on.

Cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead dedicated her life's work to understanding what makes society thrive. She summed it up in one beautiful statement that serves as a reminder as to why you must pursue your best life: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

You're either investing your time or you're spending it, but in both cases, your efforts are compounding.

 Are you investing your time into a happy life or are you spending time on things that make you miserable? Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference because it's easy to confuse that little dopamine hit with an activity that makes you happy.

Not sure if it's an investment?

Ask yourself, if you only had twenty four hours to live, would you be spending your hours on this activity? 

It helps when you see and treat time as the valuable gift it is.

This is why so many of us feel trapped or stuck with where we're at in the moment.

Is your time sucked up by things that other people have deemed as important? Or worse, you have a life you want but you're struggling with figuring out the first steps  —  so you're spending time on shit that feels like a dead end?

Time is the great equalizer because it's a fixed amount that you're given each day.

Those who learn to invest their energy wisely reap the greatest rewards.

This is your chance to hit the reset button, reclaim your time and invest in a fulfilling life. 

You don't need to make more money, change jobs or even learn a new skill to get started. In fact, you've already done all the heavy lifting. Without even knowing it, you're already on step three of three.

Step 1 Is Happiness A Choice? - You joined Immanuel Kant on a quest to discover that if it's not things, what does give you a rich life? It's the basis of what Kant shared as the three rules for happiness. Something to do, something to love and something to hope for. You gave yourself clarity in each of the ten areas of life, the first step in moving forward because it gives you a plan for something to do.

Step 2 The #1 Thing Holding You Back From Happiness - There is no trick to being happy. Happiness is a choice that you make and a plan that you follow. You choose to be happy, and then you work at it. You learned an exercise to align the life you want with what you do every day. Something to love comes from living a life aligned with what you value — prioritizing above all else the things that you said were important.

Step 3 is where you get to pull everything together. You have something to do. You have something to love. And now you're going to create a feeling of hope for the life you want because you have an expectation that it's possible. This comes from the realization that it's able to be done; it's within your power to create a daily step-by-step plan that moves you toward everything you've ever wanted (even if you've never been able to before). 

This can take some getting used to because it means you need to flip the script on how you approach and plan your life moving forward.

The third step can often feel like the most challenging one because you're already busy so the thought of finding time to add more to your day seems like mission impossible.

As we already discussed, time is a fixed amount so what the hell do you do?

Instead of pushing forward, hoping that you find the time to put into what's important, you're going to put those things first. 

By working backwards from your core values in how you plan your day, you can transform your life from one of distraction into a plan that promotes a life well lived.

Think back to what we talked about earlier. Every minute of your day gives you an opportunity to invest in something that gives you a big return. Or you have the choice to squander it on activities that compound to a huge emotional debt, taking a toll on your happiness.

Every part of your life has these types of trade offs. Think of your bills; rent/mortgage, food, electricity, water, gas to get to work, cell phone, and internet — why do you pay these things first? Because as much as you'd love to spend it all on Skittles, a hover board and Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cards, you're a fucking adult. You know that you need these things to survive. They're the bare necessities of life. You will die without them.

Think of the 10 areas not just as a more fulfilling life, but as your ride and dies that are equally as important. These are what take your life out of survival mode and put you on the path to thriving. You might not starve to death, but your soul will wither up and turn to dust if you don't feed it a nutritious diet of purpose. Every single one of the areas is like the life blood to a happy, healthy and fulfilling life because they force you to live intentionally.

I've created a one page PDF you can print off for this exercise. Think of it like the blueprint for the house you want to build. You don't just wake up and start swinging a hammer, you need an idea of what you want to accomplish each day so the house gets built. This gives you the clarity and confidence that what you're working on every day matters.

Why do you need a plan for your life? Because less clutter = more happiness.

The beautiful part about keeping your plan simple is that it makes your life easier. A blueprint is a guide for your life — it's a design that you can follow. You're not left guessing what you should do with your day, or wondering why your life feels out of whack — you've taken the time to write down the things you already know for sure make a good life good in step one.

In step two you learned how to do an alignment job for your life. You have a super simple exercise that gives you the heartbeat to your life. You can pin point the exact area of your life that needs some TLC.

And step three gives you a tool to put your mind at ease because you have a plan for how to align and improve your life in the day-to-day. You get to make a conscious decision of how much of your life you want to trade for all the other things that can claim your time.

When you put your values first, you get a renewable source of happiness. This isn't about cutting everything else from your life, it's about eating something nutritious before you funnel a bag of Skittles down your throat. 

Are you willing to trade dopamine hits at the cost of your most important values (and your life)?

If you keep doing what you've been doing, you're going to keep getting what you've been getting. We like to pretend that the 10 areas can be an afterthought, something we'll get around to when we have time. This approach is death by a thousand paper cuts. Which explains this bonkers stat: 75% to 90% percent of all doctor's office visits are from people who are overwhelmed by stress.

Why are these numbers so high? Because people are spending lavishly on bad debt choices with their time. 

When you haven't taken the time to write down the things you know for sure that make a good life good, you get more of the things that make a bad life worse.

When you don't have a blueprint to guide your decisions for what is a wise investment of your time, your bad debt compounds. If you're already flat out broke, is it a good idea to buy a his and hers pair of jet skis on credit? Fuck no. In the same way that cluttering your time and attention with too many distractions creates a life that feels chaotic, stress-filled and out of control.

You don't need to stop breathing to feel dead on the inside. A day that ignores what you said was important will devour your soul, crush your will to live, and smother your dreams. 

You don't have to lose yourself to find yourself. You just need a compass that gives you a direction to point so you know where to walk.

Life isn't a sprint, it's a marathon, so plans, systems and diets that demand 100% strict attention are doomed to fail like a kissing booth during COVID.

Sometimes you'll need to roll with the punches because shit comes up; you have to take your dog to the vet, a pop in visit from friends, a chance to go golfing, a spontaneous dinner with your partner, a project gets dropped on your plate that you weren't planning for, or your kids get sick. Hell, sometimes you have days where you want the entire world to fuck off so you can eat cheeseburgers and cry (don't judge me).

These moments are not setbacks, they are all part of a well lived life. They help you appreciate all the small things. They remind you that life shouldn't be taken so damn seriously. Laughter and fun are what give life oxygen.

And your blueprint is going to put you on a path towards the life you want. Every day you'll work backwards from your important values and plant a couple of seeds with the time you've put aside to invest in your blueprint.

The minutes of your life are the most valuable investment resource you will ever possess — because wherever your focus goes, grows.

A life well lived starts with the seeds you plant today and take the time to water tomorrow.  These decisions are yours to make. You decide what claims your time and the world grows whatever you plant.