As long as I can remember, I’ve known the secret to happiness — or, at least, my mom’s four rules for a happy life.
It’s generational: My Nonni originally gave the first three rules to my mom when my mom was 6 years old. “Children have so little power in their lives,” Nonni later told her daughter. “I wanted you to feel like you had some over yours.”
My mom added the fourth rule and passed them to me and my sister:
- Do what makes you happy.
- You can do anything in this world that you really want to do.
- You don’t have to do anything in this world that you don’t really want to do.
- Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you must.
You may either be nodding in agreement or already trying to poke holes. You don’t have to do anything in this world that you don’t really want to do? Tell that to the Internal Revenue Service when you stop filing your taxes.
I’ll tackle that argument momentarily. First, I want a happiness expert’s opinion: Is my mom on the right track?
“I love these rules,” says Stephanie Harrison, founder of happiness and well-being startup The New Happy. “They sound like excellent pieces of wisdom that could be used to guide somebody, in a number of different ways, to finding more meaning and fulfillment.”
Do what makes you happy
The first rule is simple, if not always easy: Recognize what brings you contentment and fulfillment, and seek those things out. “When in doubt, return to them,” my mom says. “This is the most important rule.”
This doesn’t mean drop everything and become a hedonist. Nobody is constantly happy, and if that’s your goal, the ordinary ups-and-downs of life might leave you disappointed and self-doubting.
Think about movie characters who throw themselves into their work, or buy up mansions or sports cars, hoping that wealth and influence alone will finally make them happy. It never works.
Rather, the rule echoes the psychological concept of “prioritizing positivity,” says Harrison. If you build activities and interactions into your day that…
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