Three questions determine 99% of the happiness in your life:
1) What am I working on and why?
2) Who am I spending my time with and why?
3) How well am I treating my body and why?
Everything else is noise.
I challenge you to answer these questions for yourself, rank your answer from strongest to weakest, and finally, do something to make the weakest just a little bit stronger.
1) What am I working on and why?
A lot of the time this question triggers people's inner worth based on their profession or whatever they do to make a living, for me it triggers something different, something deeper. When I read this question, what comes to mind for me is, what can I work on to become a better person, or a less shittier human being each day.
-Be a better listener- There's this thing about listening, did you know you can learn so much more by listening instead of speaking? I feel like in today's world, people feel the need to have the loudest voice, and the loudest opinion and in turn don't do a lot of listening. These days I thrive on being the quiet guy, not just for silence's sake, but so I can be involved with the people I interact with and listen to them. I don't know if this is news to you, but we humans love to talk about ourselves, but because everyone is talking, nobody is listening. Be the listener, my friend, being the listener makes you more likable to the rest of the world who's too busy talking to you about themselves.
-In the word of my man Mark Manson, I'm trying to control the "fucks" I give out. The Motto is to control what you can control and fuck the rest! Seriously, so much stuff that happens in our lives is out of our control, I am working on just not applying emotions to so much of the stuff around me. Stress is a killer, minimize it as much as possible in your life and you'll be better off for it. Half the shit we give our 'fucks' to, in the grand scheme of things, really doesn't matter.
-Relationship(s)! Oh, it's the big one, the R-word. No, this ain't necessarily about intimate relationships with a woman, this is about the most relationship you'll ever have in your life, and that's the relationship with yourself! It bothers me sometimes that it took me til my mid-thirties to understand the importance of a relationship with oneself. The relationship with yourself will be one that your forever working on throughout life as things change around you, and you, yourself change. Simply the relationship you have with you is the root of every other relationship you have outside of you. You teach people how to treat you by how you treat yourself, what you allow in your life, and the boundaries you create for yourself. If you respect yourself and love yourself that's the only way anyone else will. So, I want to be better each day, the avenues to doing that are to try to do nice things every day for every one I cross paths with, Act with integrity in everything I do, and finally, smile! It's the simplest, nicest gesture there is.
2) Who am I spending my time with and why?
This is another one of those things that change through the process of life. As you get older, so do your peers, everyone's life navigates in different directions. I think the most important part to answering this question is, just to be sure whomever you spending your time with be sure they are elevating your life in one aspect or another. There are parts of our lives where we don't have control who we spend time with, like work and family. What you do have complete control over is how much time you spend with family and co-workers. Co-workers are easy, you do not have to have a relationship outside of work with coworkers, hell you don't have to even have a conversation with coworkers in some yall fields of work. Now Family can be more complex to navigate around, but it doesn't have to be. When it comes to family you just have to have a strong NO. No, you don't have to go to the family cookout, No you don't have to go to your 2nd cousin's baptism, No you don't have to endure spending time with your impossible ex to spend time with your kid(s). People typically fall into the guilt trap when it comes to family, if they say no to any family functions, they either guilt themselves or they're showered with guilt by the same family members they trying to avoid. Remember earlier how we talked about 'fucks' giving, yeah, Refer back up to # 1).
3) How well am I treating my body and why?
Okkkkkkkkk, don't everybody slide down in your seat, also wipe the sweat off your head, and don't even think about using that logic being produced in your head to lie, cause it's Bullshit! Have the courage to answer this question honestly, and know that if you don't like the honest answer, well at least you took the first step(acknowledgement) to change it.
As for me, I do a pretty damn good job at taking care of my body, I'm lucky in the sense that I have been involved in some form of sport since I was 5 years old to the present day. Exercise and working out is just a way of life for me, I don't feel I could live without it. It's one of the good addictions in the world.
Ahh, thank God for an easy one... NOT! I'm not going to let myself off the hook that easy, there's so much unhealthy shit I do, that I definitely can be better at when it comes to my health. First and foremost, I drink way too much! And that's even with a cutback. There are so many benefits to not drinking, I can make an entire post about those, but I'm not. Just know that it's a constant battle that I deal with every day, maybe by the time I'm 50 I'll be down to the point of no drinking, that's a big maybe, as unhealthy as it may be, man has it got me through some tough life storms. Ah don't judge, you too have your vice, that ain't as good as prayer and meditation.
Smoking! Now that's the one I have a better chance of quitting. Another bad habit and mistreatment of my body, but it is also a vice, literally hitting a stogie right now smh 🤦🏽.
Everything else is noise.
Take the challenge for yourself, and you don't have to be an idiot like myself and put it on a blog for the world to see. These three questions open you up to view every aspect of your life. If you are solid in all these questions and you stand on your answers, that's awesome keep up the great work and build on what you already produced. If you're like 99% of us and you discover some things that need work or need to be changed, then do the work and take the necessary steps to make the changes, that's the beauty of having the privilege of being alive. These three questions will determine 99% of the happiness you have in your life, you'll never get to 100% sorry.
