The
first secret I learned from these interviews is Be
true to yourself. Each one of us is on a unique
human journey and the path to true happiness is to be true
to ourselves. This means knowing what brings us happiness
and focusing our life on what matters to us. It means
reflecting on a regular basis as to whether our life fits
our soul. In our daily lives it means knowing what brings
us joy and ensuring that we fill our life with the right
elements. It also means following our unique destiny. One
of the people I interviewed was a Latino woman who talked
about the importance of following our “destina.” The
idea is that each of us has a path that is most true to
us, which is not so much a destination as a way we are
meant to be in the world. For example, I am a teacher and
philosopher by nature and when I stay close to that path I
experience true joy.
Being
true to self often means drowning out other voices that
would ask us to live their dreams instead of ours. Ron, a
gifted chiropractor, told me the story of how he planned
to become a medical doctor but when he visited a
chiropractor shortly before starting medical school he
discovered a profession that connected to his true self.
“Others told me I was crazy but I knew it was my
path.” He told me that to follow your heart you
must have the “discipline to listen and the courage to
follow.” This means asking if the life we are living is
true to our deepest sense of self and it sometimes
requires a step of courage to follow our soul. Are you
being true to yourself right now?
The
second secret I learned is to Leave
No Regrets. It seems to me that what we fear most
as we age is not death, but rather to come to the end of
our life feeling that we never truly lived. The saddest
words ever spoken at the end of life are “I wish I
had…” Tom, a native healer, told me that the great
fear at the end of life is “the great incompleteness;
that you did not do what you came here to do.” One of
the most interesting things I discovered in talking to 235
wise people is that almost no one regretted risks they
took that did not work out and most said they wished they
had risked more. When I asked these people about major
crossroads in their lives, many of them talked about
taking risks-sometimes large and sometimes small-which
wound up bringing great happiness. One of the keys to
moving towards what we want instead of what we fear is to
focus on the best possible result and not the worst. Are
you going for what you truly want in your life or acting
with fear?
Become
Love was the third secret I learned from these
people. Not surprisingly, the greatest source of happiness
for people and the largest place of regret had to do with
people. What I discovered is that those who made people a
priority in their lives and who developed deep personal
relationships found true happiness. Many of them told me
that “things” rarely brought true joy whereas family
and friends brought lasting happiness. One way to focus on
relationships is to get intentional goals for our personal
relationships just like we do in our careers.
Yet
the most interesting thing I uncovered is that being a
loving person, the choice to give love, is even more
important in determining happiness than getting it. These
people talked to me about the importance of choosing love
and kindness as your way in the world. They taught me that
when we choose to be a loving person we find a deep sense
of meaning in life.
The
fourth secret was to Live
the Moment. One of the most common things people
told me was how fast life goes by and how important it is
to enjoy each moment. One woman told me “when you are
young you think sixty years is an incredibly long time but
when you get there you realize it was only a moment.”
Among the secrets they shared were how important it is to
live in the present, to fully enjoy whatever experience
you are having (and not to wish you were somewhere else),
and to live with gratitude focusing on what you are
grateful for rather than what you don’t have. They told
me that we have no power over the past and little power
over the future. Many of them said that whenever you find
yourself saying “I will be happy when or I will be happy
if” that it is important to remember that happiness is a
choice we make inside. One woman told me: “You have to
stop judging your life and start living your life. Stop
keeping score trying to decide if you are winning. Instead
live each day fully and stay in the moment.” Are you
living with gratitude right now, focusing on enjoying your
life rather than judging it?
The
fifth and final secret was to Give
More Than You Take. When I asked people what gave
their life the greatest meaning, people told me again and
again people that being of service and knowing that you
made things better because you were here was by far the
greatest source of meaning. I learned that whether in
career or personal life, that it is what we give not what
we take that gives life meaning. Many of them also
reminded me that we have little control over what we get
from the world every day (whether people will love us,
whether we will win the lottery, etc.) but we have
complete control over what we give to the world (whether
we choose to be kind, charitable, and to give to others).
These people reminded me that everything we take from the
world dies with us, but everything we give to the world
gets recycled. A wise woman named Susan told me that
“when we are young we cry for ourselves but as we age we
learn to cry for the world.” Indeed all the spiritual
traditions remind us that true happiness comes from
focusing on being of service and in the process joy finds
us. Are you focused on giving or getting each day?
What
I also discovered is that it is not enough to know the
secrets, we must live them. One man told me “many of us
know what is important but it is not enough to know, you
have to put these things into practice.” These people
taught me a great deal about how to live the secrets as
well and I share many of their techniques in the book. One
of my favorites was sixty-four year old Joel who told me
about how he reminds himself each day to live the moment.
“When I wake up the first thing I do is say a prayer
thanking God and the universe that I get to live one more
day and I pray that I will treat it as a gift. At night,
just before I go to bed, I have a time of meditation and
remember all the things that I am grateful for that day
and ask for one more day.”
Someone
once told me “if you want to live a happy life; ask
someone who has lived one.” This past year I had the
privilege to sit at the feet of 235 of the wisest people I
have ever met and I was amazed how clear they were on what
mattered, what didn’t matter, and how each of us can
create a life of meaning and happiness.
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