Happiness is a Skill Learned

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How’s it going everybody this is beat the bush today i’m gonna talk about how to be happy now most of you probably have some idea of what actually makes you happy already maybe eating your favorite things buying your favorite things seeing friends and family all make you very happy it seems somewhat random or ad-hoc so what i wanted to find out is if there is

A formula to be happy are there certain things that you can systematically do one after another and if you do this maybe it might guarantee your happiness this is why i went to the library and rented out this book it’s 10 keys to happier living a practical handbook for happiness by vanessa king now why would anyone read such a thing unless you’re unhappy yes i

Personally have ups and downs and sometimes i have downs that i wish is not there maybe i can smooth them out and maybe have less downs and generally be an overall happier person sometimes i get into these bouts maybe i hit a lot of home runs and then i’m like oh my gosh you know i’m really really happy for long durations years at a time and then sometimes years

At a time as well i would get myself in these routes so having read this book why i feel like this book does is that it spells it all out for you what do you need to do if you just go over every single point and just kind of humor it just kind of follow along and see if it actually works for you now this book i mean it’s about 300 some pages long so i’m just gonna

Summarize it for you and it’s not really gonna do it justice if you really want to dig more into it you can go and rent it out yourself or you can buy on amazon i think uses about ten bucks you can check it out online i feel it linked down below and i actually got a brand new library card because the one i use before it actually expired because i haven’t used it in

Such a long time now it does say ten steps so i’m gonna go over the ten steps over here the first one is giving this takes in the form of giving for charity you know you can have a cash donation or you can give food or you can give your services now what if you think of giving as in terms of you need to give in order to be happy is it selfish to only give because

You know you’re gonna be happy from it now i think even if every single person in the world he gives in order to make themselves happy it will still become a better world right i just kind of take what said in this book kind of at face value and then sometimes things make sense and i’m like okay yeah that kind of makes sense i’m gonna follow along with it one of

The things that said is that you should give often and it doesn’t matter how big or small so if you’re trying to give very often maybe weekly maybe even every other day then the best way to maximize your happiness is to give small amounts very frequently and in various different ways maybe sometimes you want to donate money sometimes maybe you want to hold a door

Open for people even though you’re very busy maybe you also want to volunteer your time there are a lot of different ways to give and it’s best if you spread it out across the week and you do it often now of course do you think this is the selfish way to do it because if you’re trying to go okay i can give a hundred dollars and instead of giving a hundred dollars

You slid it up into ten dollars every single day and then you give that instead i mean in the end i feel like you’re still giving and it’s still a good thing of course i think if you’re more generous yeah give them in large chunks but generally if you give large chunks very infrequently it’s probably not as good in terms of your own happiness rather than just

Divide those up and then give them across time so change it up a little bit maybe divide the money that you’re giving into separate chunks and maybe convert it into other ways that you can give the second one is relating which is connecting with people friends and family and you know you need constant social contact and i know i personally am a bit of an introvert

So i tend to like to stay home i need enough alone time in order to feel energized however i still also need a little bit of socializing in order to feel sort of whole i guess so i think all these points so far you don’t have a class maybe in grade school or high school that tells you this is how you need to be happy you need to complete these things you need to

At least have a minimum of giving something all the time and also relating with people hovering friends around and a bunch of other points that i’m gonna mention throughout this video after having read the first chapter it says giving you know giving your time giving something i sought to do something to help other people i actually had a pair of sunglasses left

In my car from someone riding my uber and basically i was a bit too busy to take the time to you know deliver these sunglasses because it’s very far away for me to give these back but i thought okay i’m gonna do something nice i’m going to go out of my way to give these sunglasses back to the original owner it’s gonna cost me money to do this so i actually had to

Ride bart to go to san francisco and deliver these sunglasses so i’m like okay you know – we’ll do something else while i’m at it but i would have to say the act of doing this the act of spending time to call this person back actually made me happy so even though i actually spent real time and money to go there i feel like it was well worth my time and money to

Give these sunglasses back the person was very happy about it and you know i’m happy about it for doing like a little good deed the third thing is exercising now i remember in high school i mean i had physical education and it’s just kind of built in they go oh yeah you know exercise this is something that’s required of you but you know when you’re in the working

World you are no longer required to exercise anymore and no one tells you that yes you need to exercise to you know keep up you’re happy in this novel this is something that is a prerequisite if only everyone knew that you need to complete this check list of items in order to be optimally happy then i i think you know the whole world might be a happier place right

What if you’re lazy about it but what if you know that your happiness depends on it you need to get in a little bit of exercise maybe i don’t know run a mile a day or something you know if you are lazy about it walk a block a day walk a little bit and then you have to build up to it don’t stress over trying to you know do 20 minutes of exercise if you are not in

Shape or something you just do a little bit of it at a time and then next time around you can do a little bit more whatever you’re comfortable with as long as you get yourself out to walk for five minutes even right it doesn’t really matter you just have to you know get yourself up to the physical condition where you actually will do this and then you realize that

After you do this you are happier after doing this and then you have more energy to do things that will make you happy as well so it’s a self feeding positive cycle here the fourth one is awareness in other words being mindful and i talked about this on this channel before if you’ve seen my milk tea video where i go okay i’m going to drink my milk tea not doing

Anything else other than just drink the milk tea itself i’m just gonna sit there no distraction i’m not watching a video or anything i’m not reading some ads i’m just sitting there there’s no one else there and i’m just sipping my milk tea just concentrating on the tea itself the flavor of it because i enjoy so much and basically nothing else so this translates

Into practicing to be mindful about other aspects of my life as well whatever you are doing people talk about multitasking right so instead of multitasking you are single tasking whatever you are doing single tasks and single tasks like crazy you fully concentrate on this thing and this is all you think about when you do this you kind of get into this flow type

Of thing and i’ll get into this into other points i’m going to talk about the fifth one is learning new things now again this is yet another point that is not often talked about sometimes when we are at a job we finished going to school and we are practicing what we already know we are not often actively searching for brand new things to learn about we are not

Bringing in new books like this angle oh happiness maybe i don’t know everything about happiness let me learn about it let me learn about how to play a musical instrument let me know learn about how to edit video so constant bringing new things into your life and trying to learn new things as the constant thing you’re a lifetime learner just learning new things is

Gonna make you a happier person because you’re gonna absorb a new skill and then gonna feel like you’re worth something and that you have something brand-new to do you have a new ability under your belt that you can exercise so this in itself is like a source of happiness in itself i’m getting a little bit worked up just talking about all this because this is you

Know kind of near and dear to me to my heart i guess because everyone wants to be happy right the sixth one is direction to have goals to look forward to and i have something near and dear to me to share about in this because goals right you want an overarching goal to yourself that you set for yourself not because you go to your job and then your job tells you oh

You gotta have these deadlines you gotta do this these aren’t things that you identified yourself that you kind of dreamed up yourself so following these goals these are not your goals these are someone else’s goals unless for some reason you know you are super gung-ho about going to your job and their goals is also your goals which was a perfectly fine thing to

Have but oftentimes these your personal goals and your job goals are misaligned i think at least 80 90 percent of the time this is the case so you need to look at your own goals and you need to go and pursue them do them a little bit at a time every single day my little story with this is that long time ago i always liked robotics and i did not realize this until

I started reading this book and i’m like oh my gosh i forgot about my life goal from so long ago and i just kind of veered off because long time ago i always like robotics right and i actually picked my master’s degree because of robotics i thought oh i’m gonna do control systems because you know maybe it has a little bit of robotics because my school did not

Actually have a degree where you can have a master’s in robotics so i i’m picking something that you know that kind of goes along with it and then i just kind of switch around majors and then when i graduated i did not get a job as a robotics person i just figured you know maybe i can just kind of work my way there but little did i know you know reality sets in

You just got to get a job that pays well and you’re after a year it’s not a job working in robotic job after job i just kind of got feared off and then i realize okay you know the dream you know as you get older your dreams kind of dwindle because you’ve been kind of indoctrinated into the typical nine-to-five the rat race and then you just go okay yeah this is

This is a job at least is electrical engineering right so what i realized with this book is i went back to what my original dreams are is like wow you know whenever i look up robotic stuff when i look up you know how to design one ways to do it i just kind of lose myself so you gotta find things that you do where you just kind of lose track of time think about

All of all of those things don’t lose hope in those dreams because you got to go back and snatch them even if your current job is not actually doing that maybe after your job you need to kind of get back into it look at what hobbies that you like when you lose yourself where you lose track of time the next one is resilience finding ways to bounce back so you know

If you’re in the rut you need to do things actively in order to get yourself out of the rut don’t just go oh i’m sad i you know depress and stuff let me just you know do nothing about it and just kind of sulk over it so you need to do something actively maybe you can read this book you can do all those things that makes you happy maybe you can go exercise you know