Simplify Your Life

This is probably one of the smallest write up that you may see on this topic. It can be the most complex topic or as you can see, i have made it simple. Do note that this article doesn’t tell you how to come up with your purpose in life or how to achieve happiness in life. It only helps you evaluate if you have a purpose in life and if you are happy with it at this point in your life. 

Purpose in life is all about internal fulfilment with external impact. It’s something that assures you that your actions and choices matter – to yourself and to others around you. It gives you motivation. 

The size of internal fulfilment and external impact will vary from person to person, but the happier you are with it AND if you are on the path to achieving it, you will have true happiness. As you can see, there is a circular reference – if you are not happy with the “size” of your purpose in life, it’s hard to be happy even if you achieve it. 

A word about happiness

To understand human happiness, its important to know the 2 fundamental truths of being human:

1. Humans are social animals, their happiness is pegged to happiness of others around them i.e. happiness is relative
2. For humans, grass is greener on the other side – We are wired to want what we don’t have and what others have

Happiness assessment

I have come up with a very simple assessment for happiness. Just answer these 5 questions and rate each with a score of 1-5. 1 – strongly disagree, 2 – disagree, 3 – neither agree nor disagree, 4 – agree, 5 – strongly agree.

1. I feel appreciated and loved by those close to me 
2. I have very few things in life (material or non-material) that I want which don’t have today
3. I seldom have thoughts that make me sad or angry
4. I have personal goals and i feel i am progressing towards them (if your professional goals are personal to you, then consider them as your personal goal)
5. I often feel grateful for what i have

Total up the score. Any score of 20 or more, consider yourselves a happy person at this point in your life. Any score of 15 or more, you are doing all right.

One final note about Purpose in life

YOLO. So it’s good to set an ambitious purpose in life and strive to achieve it. Which means it’s ok to be unhappy if you don’t have a purpose in life that makes you happy or if you are not progressing enough to achieve it. The only consolation is that you will know why you are unhappy and believe me, not everyone knows why they are unhappy.