There are a lot of assumptions about what things will make us happy. Often in this list are often things like money, job promotions, relationships, having children, holidays etc. However if this is the case, how do we explain the large volumes of suicides by people that have all these things?
In reality, every person is unique, and what will make us happy is therefore also unique.
In order to achieve a happier life, we need to really spend some time considering:
- What we value most in our life?
- What things we wish we could spend more time on?
- What things we wish we could spend less time on?
Happiness is achieved by spending as much time as we can doing the things that we value. This could be our friendships, creative activities, getting out in the fresh air, our physical health, our faith/spirituality, our family, exercise, our pets, new experiences, community contribution, time alone or lots of other things.
Unfortunately there are a lot of people experiencing symptoms of depression because they are not living a life they would choose for themselves, they are not living a life that could ever make them happy. They are spending large chunks of time on things they don’t value at all, and not spending any decent amount of time on the things that are really important to them.
Of course there are some things we can’t change at all, some things that will take a period of time to change, but other things that we could be doing something about today.
