Are you ready to embark on a transformative quest for more happiness in your life? Discover the three flavors of happiness—pleasure, purpose, and participation—and learn how small shifts in your daily life can lead to profound joy. Ready to build fertile ground for happiness to thrive? Dive in and uncover three practical steps to invite and reveal more joy into your life.
All right, all right.
Let’s dive into everything Happiness. So if you have not met me, hello, I’m Carri Richard, and I guide people to work with their mind to let go of what gets in the way of all of who you are and the life you’re here to live. I’ve helped hundreds of women and men clear away what stood in the way of their success. Transformation comes in small shifts at the root, so let go of the fight, work with what you’ve been given, and step into all that is here for you.
So happiness. Quite a few years ago, I was sitting in a group that was talking about the topic of happiness. And there was this quiet, sweet woman that was sitting over on the other side, and she raised her hand and she said, “happiness is wanting what you have”. And it blew my mind a little bit. I had not thought of it that way because I have been for a long time was a high achiever. “Let’s get it done. Let’s get there”. And this idea that happiness comes from enjoying what is here now was a new concept for me. So So if you’ve heard that before, if you live that, bravo.
If it’s new to you, let it sink in and be curious about it. So we’re going to talk about happiness and the three types of happiness. Did you know there were three types? Here they are. Pleasure, happiness with purpose, and participation.
Pleasure, it’s also called hedonia or hedonistic, is that physical happiness that comes from pleasure. So it can be physical pleasure. It can be pleasure of the eyes, something if you’re out in nature or looking at art or anything that you find pleasurable. It’s the things that come through the senses. So this is one happiness. The other one is another one is purpose, which is eudaimonia. This is happiness that comes from being on purpose. So this is happiness that comes from doing something with meaning. It may be helping another. It may be doing what you would say is your calling. It may be anything like that where you’re on purpose. And the last one is participation. So happiness can also often actually come from your participation, being a part of, whether it’s a part of your family, whether it’s a part of a friend group, whether it’s a part of an organization, it could be a part of an organization.
It could be a part of a committee. It could be when you are participating in life. So other ways, I just want to pause for a minute and think if you can come up with one thing in your life right now that is in each of these categories. Okay. So happiness also can be described as joy, excitement, gratitude, pride, like pride in doing something, optimism, contentment. So as we look at all of this happiness, my question to you is to pause for a minute. Are these things a regular part of your life? Are they often happening in your life? If they are, bravo.
If they aren’t, that’s okay, because what we’re here to talk about today is, would you like more happiness in your life? So I’m going to give you three steps. I’m going to offer three steps to you to increase your fertile ground for happiness. And any one of these will move the needle. So you don’t have to do all three. Listen. And if you need to listen twice, that’s fine. Choose something. And like I said, transformation starts at the root. So if you choose one of these and apply it with repetition, because that’s how we talk to our subconscious, is repetition over time I promise that it will move the needle for you.
So here are the three steps.
The first one, you can modify your search. So we have these big brains on top of our neck, in our head, that are always on the search. And culturally, maybe conditionally, our habit is to search outward – to always be looking outward. I’ve done a vlog or two on meditation. I encourage you to go back if you haven’t seen that. This is a way to train your brain to search inward and rest, versus always outward. So we’re going to modify our search for happiness. Often it is said, “When this happens, I will be happy”. If this, then . My encouragement to you in modifying your search, is inventory where you are with respect your happiness with the three P’s, right? Do you have pleasure? Do you do things, or are you in environments that invite happiness via pleasure? Do you take a walk outside and enjoy what’s out there? Do you have other forms of pleasure? Are you doing things on purpose, or are you doing things in reaction? And participation, Are you part of a group? Do you have support? Take a look at that and appreciate what you do have.
Another one is often people who are high achievers who do a lot are very good at what they do. Often we can complicate things and put so much on our plate that – that pressure to get it all done can actually create an environment where it’s tough to be happy. Where we get to the point of, “When I get through all this, I will be happy”. And instead of happy during the time, in the present. So if there are many things on your plate, or if you’re looking to start something new, there are the four Cartesian questions that can really give you some insight on whether it’s necessary or not. So they go like this, if I start this new project, what will happen? If I don’t start this new project, what will happen? If I start this new project, what won’t happen? And if I don’t start this new project, what won’t happen? This is a great way to actually get your brain around and look at something from different perspectives. And often you can get a lot of clarity on whether it’s really necessary.
Another last one for modifying your search, practice appreciation. We get what we focus on, and this doesn’t mean that everything is going to come up unicorns and rainbows because we’re appreciating things. However, the more we can appreciate what is here and now, the more we can see things to appreciate. This is a simple repetitive Practice. When you sit down to the dinner table, whoever you’re with, appreciate something about them. Go around and each appreciates something about the other. It may be bumpy at first. There may be participants who say, “Why are we doing this”? My encouragement is just to practice and see what happens.
All right, the next one is Don’t do it alone. So I had talked about participation being one of the forms of happiness. This idea of… Not this idea, but having social support, whether it’s a good friend, a family member, an organization, a couple organizations. You may go play tennis, you may play sports, you may join an organization, You may go play cards with people. It could be anything like that. But remember, we’re not here to be alone. Connection is one of the most important basic needs for us.
So this creates such fertile ground for happiness. There’s some studies that show that this social support can lend itself to over 40% of somebody’s happiness. So if you don’t know where to start, reach out to one person, go look in your community at what’s going on. Get involved. Go volunteer at a shelter. Go volunteer somewhere. Even if it’s a couple of hours, you are going to meet people. And this is such an important piece of happiness.
All right, last one for the day. We have – Reframe happiness. I’ve alluded to this throughout this, and really, it’s the idea is to take happiness and shift it from a destination to a journey. We cannot make happiness happen. Really, what we’re doing is creating fertile ground for happiness to occur. So if you have in your talk track, if you have, When I do this, I will be happy. My encouragement is to really look for happiness in the pursuit of that thing. What can you appreciate today? What can you reflect on today? Have you taken one step towards that thing? Great. Celebrate that. I have a dear friend who used to talk about being ambushed by joy.
And this is really when we hold happiness as It’s almost like we create this fertile ground to invite happiness in, and we can hold that space. It’s amazing what comes rushing in. So again, my encouragement, choose one of these. If you want to do all of them, great. But I’d rather see you pick one and repeat it over and over and watch what happens. So I hope this serves you. If you like this, please subscribe and hit the notification so you can see next time I’m here. And may you have much happiness.
And until next time,
