The Five Ingredients of Happiness

I've been reading The power of Self Discipline by Brian Tracy over the last few weeks, and I just had to share a small extract from the book, as It helped me so much.

The five ingredients of happiness.

A short fall in any of these areas can cause stress, unhappiness and a feeling of being our of control.

1. Health & Energy - The most important element of a good life.

2. Happy Relationships - 85% of your happiness will come from your relationships with other people

3. Meaningful work - to be truly happy you must be truly engaged with life. You must be doing things that keep you active & give you a sense of fulfilment. If you are making a living you must be doing work that you enjoy, do well and for which you are well paid. People are only truly happy when they feel like they are making a contribution of some kind, that they are putting in more than they are taking out. You need to feel that what you do really makes a difference to the lives & work of other people.

4. Financial independence - some of the greatest fears we experience are those of loss, failure and poverty. We fear being destitute without funds and dependant on others.. One of your chief responsibilities to yourself is to work towards financial independence and financial freedom throughout your life.

5. Self- actualisation -This is the feeling that you are becoming everything that you are capable of becoming. This occurs when you feel you are realising more and more of your true potential.

Abraham Maslow is best known for his hierarchy of needs. He determined that people have both deficiency needs & being needs. People strive either to compensate for their deficiencies or to realise their potential.

He concluded that you only begin to evolve & develop to the highest levels possible for you when deficiency needs are first satisfied.

Deficiency needs:
* Safety & survival - food, water, accommodation, clothing
* Security - Financial , emotional and physical
* Belonging - Social situations with others , home and work.

Being Needs:
* Self esteem/ego - feel & like yourself determines your happiness more than any other factor. This comes from being liked, accepted, doing a good job and moving towards your goals.

Exercise

1 Identify the areas of your life in which you feel the happiest and the most in control - How can you expand on them?

2 Identify the area of your life that you feel controlled by other people or factors - what can you do to resolve these situations?

3 Intentify those areas in your life where there's a gap between your current level of accomplishment & what you would really like to achieve - What can you do to bridge these gaps?

4 Identify the most pressing needs that you have today that are not begin fulfilled - How can you begin to satisfy this deficiency need.

5. Identify those activities that give you the greatest feeling of personal happiness - what can you do to increase these moments of happiness?

6 Identify those areas in life that you are the most discontented - which steps could you take immediately that would resolve those feelings of discontent.

7. Define happiness for yourself what does it mean? What would have to happen for your to feel truly happy? what can you do immediately to help create this situation?

I hope it helped you as much as it helped me. I now have a completely new set of action points which Ill be sharing over the coming weeks.


Plus-You Can Now Join Our FREE Mastering Success Facebook Community at www.masteringsuccess.group