WHAT NO ONE TELLS YOU ABOUT REAL HAPPINESS

Contrary to the common beliefs, happiness in real terms is an outcome of multiple parameters which No one tells us, what they are, read to know more

What we know and Understand about Happiness

Most of us while growing up are always told what we need to achieve that will make us happy and whatever we are told is what they have been told by our elders so most of the understanding about happiness and being happy is all about societal perception about happiness or specific mindset of the family members where you grow up.

Most often the parameters which are linked to happiness are primarily:

Being wealthy

Being Successful in your career

Attaining higher grades in school or exams

What they make us to believe and what we find out

While growing through the formative years, they always give us examples of people who are doing great with their career or are earning vast sums of money and living in big houses, driving big cars, and wearing branded clothing.

These people also get special recognition and people will flock around them during the family events and functions listening to their stories, all this makes us believe that this can bring true happiness as we see them happy and everyone around feeling happy.

When we reach a certain age or pass through the stages of life and look around, all that we have seen, or we have been told that can bring real happiness why it is not making any sense now when we have attained all that in our life and WHY WE ARE STILL NOT HAPPY.

Search for Happiness

Having wealth, possessions, and being successful in career are not bad things but all these years we have grown up thinking that when I will have all these in my life, I am going to be a happy person, so why now when I have attained these things I still feel unhappy, so where is the true happiness and how can I find it and start living the same.

Search for happiness can take you to different people and most of them will share with you their perspectives, their emphasis will be on things like spirituality, focus on your health, meditation, etc. You try all these and after some time realize that even these are short term and not able to give you the real and long-lasting happiness which you have been searching for.

Where is the Solution?

The solution lay in understanding the fact that Happiness is not an outcome of attaining only Money, Career, Spirituality, or health outcomes, but it involves other dimensions of life.

We have never given a thought that Happiness depends on dimensions or parameters other than these because NO one has ever taught this to us and most of us have no clue what these are and never tried to find them too.

So, is there any tool or guide to finding what I need to refer to if I need to check why I am not happy even though I have got all those things which I have been told and I keep gaining more of them thinking that maybe they will add happiness to me?

The Answer–Wheel of Life

What is a wheel of life?

How can it help me predict my happiness?

Does it work?

You might think all these in your mind.

To share my story with all of you, I also had some doubts and questions when I heard about this and I was quite skeptical trying it out.

So, what is a wheel of life?

Wheel of life is a tool which primarily helps us to understand how we are doing in different dimensions of our life in the current scenario.

What are the different dimensions of our life?

Health and Fitness

Finances and Wealth

Career/Business

Love Relationships

Friends and Family

Fun, Leisure, and entertainment

Personal/ Spiritual Development

Social Environment

So there are these 8 different dimensions of life and if you want to find out why you are happy or not in your life, then you can find your answers here.

How to use this tool and what is the outcome

Look at all the 8 dimensions and start by looking out at your current life status on all these different dimensions and then based on your assessment rate them on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 means the least and 10 means the highest.

So those dimensions/areas of your life where you feel you are not doing that great or are very low, rate it accordingly and those areas of your life where you feel you are doing great, you can give yourself a higher score.

Please ensure that you are very honest with yourself and this tool is not for someone to see and judge you, but this tool is for you to see how you are faring in different areas/dimensions of your life.

Once you have completed rating yourself on each dimension, submit the same if it’s an online exercise, or else if you are doing it on a paper, you can see how the rating is for each area.

Once you have completed the same, please look at the same and see how your wheel of life looks like.

If the wheel of life is a Jagged or spiked one where some areas of your life are very high and the others are low, it shows clearly that there are some areas/dimensions in your life where you have not put your conscious efforts or are being ignored or you never thought that they are important.

If the wheel of life is a smooth circle wherein all the areas of life are uniform or the variance is not that much and it appears to be a smooth wheel, it shows that you have been consciously putting your efforts into all important areas of your life.

What conclusions you can make out and how will it impact Happiness

You might see one of these 3 different depictions from the Wheel of life:

1. Jagged Wheel or the spiked wheel.

2. Smooth wheel–All areas rated high

3. Smooth Wheel–But all areas are rated very low

1. Jagged Wheel or the spiked wheel.

So, if you see that what you have got after the exercise is an option 1 where the Wheel of Life is a Jagged or a spiked wheel, it shows clearly that there are few areas of your life where you have put lots of efforts and there are few which are ignored or No effort is being put, it can also mean that you may not have considered some dimensions important and never tried addressing them at the conscious level.

This will also show a situation where even though you are doing great in certain areas of your life, you will not feel happy and there will always be a feeling of regret.

Let’s say that you are doing great with Money, Health, and Career but you are not having great love relationships or have time for fun, leisure, and entertainment.

SO what’s going to be the outcome, You will feel Unhappy, contrary to what you have been told and what you have grown thinking about, just having great ratings on Money, Career, and Health would still not be able to make you happy or bring real happiness.

Similarly, for Option 3 where you have a smooth wheel but you have rated all the dimensions very low because you feel that even though you are putting efforts into all the areas of life but you are not doing to the extent, you are required to put those efforts and you will not be happy.

Option no 2 is what is desirable and each one of us needs to work for and try to attain that, because once you have all your dimensions of life rated higher and the wheel is also a smooth wheel showing that you have been working on all the parameters ignoring no one of them.

What Outcomes you will get:

1. Realization: Once you have gone through the activity and looked at the wheel, how it looks like will bring the realization about what is going on currently in your life and different dimensions of your life.

2. Which areas of your life are strongest and which are the weakest.

3. Virtual reminder of how your life looks like and what you need to do to bring changes.

Action Plan:

Look at all those areas of life where the ratings are low and which are impacting your happiness, you need to select those areas and strike out an action plan to address them and bring them to the average and ultimately to the good level.

Conclusion:

We all have grown up listening to how Money, Career can bring about happiness, and later when we reach those levels, and start realizing that this is not the case and we need something more than these to feel happy about.

Wheel of Life can help bring about the awareness of our current state and what necessary actions we need to take to bring genuine happiness into our life.

How I could be of some help:

IF you also experience that you also don’t feel happy with your current life status and would like to work on discovering how your Wheel of Life looks like, you can connect with me and we can work together on this.

Apart from understanding how your current wheel of life looks like, I can also work along with you to address the areas which are lower on the rating, jointly work with you to set up outcomes for each area and, ensure you achieve higher ratings in those areas.

About the Author:

Having a humble upbringing but in a family which was closely knit with strong values I have understood very early in my life that we have the potential to create a life we desire, I have always challenged the Status quo and pushing myself to aspire for bigger goals, having gone through the bad patch in my career 5 years back, I have realized it’s all about your Mindset. I am here to help people to live their life to the fullest by utilizing there potential and explore a world of infinite possibilities.