Day 8 of Be Extraordinary and it talked about happiness. There are 3 types of happiness - happiness from experiences, happiness from growth & happiness from meaning. We've become accustomed to happiness from experiences being the only interpretation of happiness. We just don't have a word in English to symbolize those other ones as well. So it's tougher to translate that into a feeling. The exercise here is to share a time when I've experienced each of these types of happiness.
Happiness from experiences: I think most times when I travel and visit a new city, I'm in a state of happiness. When I surprised my mom for Mother's Day this year, I was happy. When I win a game of ping pong at the office, I'm happy.
Happiness from growth: Many times it's actually captured in here where I come to a profound realization during the course of journaling. That growth and learning from insight is addicting. I also love reading and gaining new knowledge and wisdom that I can then apply in my life. That gives me happiness. Taking notes, seeing the improvement in my physical, mental, emotional, moral, and spiritual frames gives me happiness.
Happiness from meaning: This is the one that I've experienced for the first time the most recent. I'd say as I was building out that education proposal V1, I had happiness from meaning. As I was going through my Quarterly Reviews and planning, I gained happiness from defining my purpose, mission, and values. Coming to a realization of my 150 year plan was a deep moment of joy, happiness, awe, and motivation.
As I was writing this even, I had a mini moment of happiness. When I wrote "state of happiness," I related it to my 150 year plan vision of having those communities. Instead of communities, why not call them states. And then the names of each of those states "happiness" or "love" or "bliss", etc. So that we're always living in a state of happiness or the like! And then when it's international, they too can have names in their native language of positive words and feelings. That's cool!
Is there a 4th type of happiness though? Because 'happiness from' still signifies that it's a cause and effect relationship. I think first think we get happiness from is experiences, pretty simple to understand. Then it moves up to growth. Then it moves up to meaning. Once you have happiness from meaning, it trickles back down into the others because you have a meaning, a purpose for your growth and experiences. Call it trickle-down happiness lol.
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But happiness is a state of being - everything comes from it. What if we shifted the paradigm here? Once we acquire happiness from experiences, growth, and meaning, we'll ideally be living in an eternal state of happiness. So what if, at that point, we switch the wording? It'll then become experiences from happiness. Growth from happiness. Meaning from happiness. It'll become an hourglass model (see pic). Happiness from growth and growth from happiness happening in real time!
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