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I am reading a book about happiness. It’s called “The Blue Zones of Happiness.” The theme of happiness comes up often in my blogs, but I came to an important insight at the beginning of Dan Buettner’s book. An insight that can also help you in your search for happiness or peace in life. This can be for both home and office.
In the article “What is your Ikigai?“, I describe Dan Buettner’s blue zones including the best practices to help you live your own Ikigai.
The new book is about experiencing greater happiness or joy and how to elevate it.
Dan Buettner has identified three ingredients that are characteristic of people from the blue zones and lead to greater happiness and joy. He calls these ingredients the “three P’s” of happiness: pleasure, purpose & pride.
1. Pleasure
Pleasure is about enjoying life. For me, it also means enjoying the things I do. It is those moments that have a positive effect on me. Yesterday I met an old friend from Canada. I laughed, smiled, and experienced joy seeing him and hearing about his adventures.
Here are some tips to have more fun and experience more joy:
–Eat together at work: Don’t sit in front of your computer alone to eat your sandwiches. Have lunch with colleagues and talk about your family, what (challenges) you experienced over the weekend, football matches, and tell each other the latest jokes.
–Turn Competition into Collaboration: See how you can collaborate more with your competitors. This ensures more job satisfaction because you do not have to worry about others and how they will cut your prices.
–Eat plenty of fruits and vegetables: Not only will it be good for your health, but it will also increase your happiness.
->Reading tip: 100 ways to experience more joy and happiness
2. Purpose
According to Dan Buettner, you experience more joy when you live your values and passions in the service of a greater purpose. Aristotle believed that true joy came only from living with meaning and doing what is worth doing.
Just look at nature and the bees. They collect nectar to make honey. They don’t ask themselves in the morning, “What should I do today?”.
I am convinced that the purpose of all living beings is universal and that it is to serve life.
“What is the secret of service? In a word, love.”
-Harold Klemp
When I do my work with passion and when I can live my values, I experience more than satisfaction. I experience love. People sometimes come up to me after a workshop to thank me. All I can say is “With love.”
->Reading tip: 4 ways to discover your values in life
Your life purpose differs from your mission, vision, or WHY. There is only one purpose and a WHY for you or your organization. You can have multiple missions or visions. They are context-bound. A mission contains actions that you will take to live your vision. For example, I have a different mission for my company than my family or the spiritual path I follow. You can find more about this in the article about the difference between purpose, mission, vision, and your WHY.
What you can do to experience more happiness is the following:
–Focus on trust: Trust in each other has a great influence on happiness. Find a place to live or a job where there are trustworthy people. Trustworthy people attract trustworthy people. Keep this in mind as you expand your network. But start by being trustworthy yourself and doing what you promise, being on time, and having integrity.
3. Pride
Pride is about how you experience or are satisfied with what you have achieved in life and where you are now. Scientists measure this by asking people how satisfied they are with their lives. They rate this on a scale of zero to 10. It is an important measurement because it includes everything in life, such as relationships, work, housing, and health.
Because we (read: myself) are too busy in life, with our work, our family, our hobbies, or our renovations, we are not aware of important achievements that give us satisfaction.
What you can do then is to choose a job based on your interests. You can also automatically start saving or investing for an extra pension. That provides more financial peace so that you can experience more pride and joy.
It also helps to do your daily shopping. Do not have it delivered by a courier. By walking or cycling to the supermarket, you meet other people, exercise, and get fresh fruit and vegetables. Put those fresh vegetables at home where you can see them right away and grab them when you’re hungry. This way, you also realize a better place for your health. At some offices, you see that fresh fruit is available for employees.
People who live in the happiest places on earth have all three ingredients of happiness in their lives. They combine fun, purpose, and pride to be resilient and experience well-being.
Discover your WHY
Pleasure, purpose, and pride help you to lead a happy life. It’s about finding something outside of yourself and focusing on that. Your WHY can help you with that. Because it is unique and positive, it contributes to more happiness and joy in life. You cannot achieve your WHY as you would achieve a goal. It is generative and infinite. It is your contribution and its effect on the world.
Discover your WHY so you know how to experience more lasting satisfaction and what you can do to live your purpose together with pleasure and pride. We can help you! Contact us today to get to know us.
What do you do to experience more happiness in life? Which of the three ingredients appeals to you the most, and what do you still need to work on? Let me know in the comment field below. The other readers of this article and I are looking forward to reading from you! I will tell you which one I still have to work on the most.
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Source:
–The Blue Zones of Happiness, Dan Buettner
