The 4 Responsibilities of a Happy Life
And how the ripples of momentum can make or break it.
Six years ago, I was overweight, unfit, jobless, single, and living with my parents. I had no direction, no path, nor a reason to get up in the morning.
I had been letting other people have a say in what my life looked like because I had failed to take the time to do it for myself. I’d cut corners, I tried to find the easy way out, and was destined for a less than ideal life.
I had been waiting for the answers to fall in my lap, for someone to fix me or even save me, not realizing I was giving away my power for any worthwhile change to transpire.
I didn’t know what to do or how to get out of this funk I was in, but I knew it had to change, starting with how I felt about myself.
1. Self-love
I’ve documented my journey with self-love before, and even now, I still have times when I struggle with it. It’s a lesson that I need to remind myself time and time again. It’s not because I don’t value self-love; it’s because I’m also fending off self-sabotaging thoughts that I spent years cultivating.
Back when I was seventeen years old, I had hypnotherapy that turned my life around. It taught me that I didn’t need to be a victim of my nature and that I could turn my life around if I only took the responsibility of doing so. I wouldn’t say I’ve ever been depressed in my life, but I certainly feel like I’ve teetered on the fringes a few times.
At the time, hypnotherapy changed the trajectory of my life and how I perceived it, revealing to me that I didn’t have to react to the world all the time and be a passenger and wait for the world to tell me what to do, that I could act and impose myself to the world instead.
I may have forgotten this valuable lesson six years ago, but I was determined to make sure the momentum began shifting the other way, even if it did mean I had to start from square one.
Taking the time to nurture self-love allowed me to be mindful of what brings out the best in me and understand what value I could bring to a situation. It helped me establish my own worth, rather than depending on others' validation to feel some semblance of significance.
It didn’t happen overnight, but when I found myself in momentum’s good graces, making consistent actions that aligned with values that resonated with me brought profound changes.
2. Choosing a Life of Meaning
I first came across Dr. Jordan Peterson on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in 2017, where shortly after, I found myself consuming a lot of his content on Youtube, even as far as watching his 3-hour lecture series on the psychology of the Bible while I was working out on the StairMaster!
If there’s one takeaway from consuming his videos and books, is that there is a ripple effect on what we do in life and what we don’t do.
According to Peterson, we can either lead a life of nihilism free from responsibility or choose a life of responsibility. The consequence of the latter means that taking on the responsibility brings a deeper meaning to our lives, whereas the former carries a shallow existence.
Indulging in days binge-watching Netflix, eating junk food, and wasting a day may not appear as damaging on the surface, but the real danger lies in the accumulation. Hiding away through pleasure for days, months or years was a distraction that stopped me from asking the harder questions that I needed to answer in order to progress with my life, hampering any hopes I had of pursuing a meaningful life.
Meaning provides a sense of control over our lives, should we take the responsibility to enact it.
Success and happiness may not be guaranteed, but through enacting meanings that bring growth, we can, at the very least leverage the likelihood of it coming our way.
3. Progress=Happiness: Picking the ‘Best’ Path
One of my all-time favorite films is Trainspotting (1996), a film (and book) that dive deep into the discussion of whether it’s better to lead a hedonistic existence filled with pleasure versus taking on the meaning that a life of responsibility holds.
Renton chooses heroin and a nihilistic experience at the beginning of the film, criticizing the mediocre existence that befalls the rest of us. It’s only at the end of the film where he fully realizes he is better off choosing everyday life and its responsibilities rather than falling victim to one's own debased nature.
Picking a meaning is one thing, but picking a path is the meaning put into action. It drives it forward.
Some of us can relate to the idea of waiting for the best opportunities or some salvageable future to save us, but really, it’s better we pick the best available path with the resources we have at our disposal, rather than waiting on a hypothetical situation.
‘‘If you want to have ongoing joy and fulfillment in your life, the secret is just one word — progress.’’
- Tony Robbins
Even if it does not end up the way I intended, at the very least I can rest assured that I took the best available option I could have taken at that moment.
Of course, we’d love it if all the stars aligned before we took our first steps, that we had all the answers, but the human experience is not operated under perfect conditions.
It’s about becoming less wrong than before, rather than fear failing under the overweighing pressures that perfection brings.
It’s like getting to the next level in a video game; once we’ve mastered the skills and expertise of whatever level we’re at, the better equipped we’ll be to proceed and go further than before.
4. My Happiness is MY Responsibility
This was a huge breakthrough for me and made me reevaluate some of the more unrealistic conditions I would place on myself in order to be happy.
It led me to shift my focus more on what was already good in my life worth celebrating rather than dwell and be consumed by what was lacking.
In the past, I would place that responsibility on relationships, unaware that I was giving away my power and ability to do so for myself.
The more unrealistic the conditions I’d set for my happiness, the more unrealistic the chances of real happiness became, and the greater I was setting myself up for disappointment.
For happiness to play a dominant fixture in my life, I had to rewrite what happiness looked like and find new ways for it to come into my life, even if it meant looking in the unlikeliest of situations.
By making gratitude a focal point, switching my focus, and reminding myself of the good that was in my life, over time, I felt my mind had become adept at finding more experiences that correlated with this feeling.
Takeaways: The Ripple Effect of Responsibility
I’ve come to look at happiness differently. Yes, it’s fantastic when things go my way, but I’ve made great efforts in ensuring that my happiness does not crack under the first sign of threat.
I realize that there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to happiness. What makes me happy may not necessarily make the next person happy. Still, I do think there are fundamental principles I’ve mentioned in this article that can, at the very least, maximize the likelihood of it happening.
Sometimes life will bring us surprises along the way, but there’s no greater feeling than being able to make oneself happy, rather than relying on ideal conditions to go our way.
The most significant turning point for me came when I stopped cowering from challenges and confronted them instead. It’s all well and good trying to hide away from the obstacles, but if you know they’re still out there, then it’s hard for me ever to achieve real peace until I’ve confronted it.
Problems come with the territory of being human. The more they accumulate, and the more unaddressed they become, the heavier they weigh on our shoulders.
The more I make a habit of confronting the things that play on my mind, the better quality freedom I get to experience.
I often quote from Mark Manson’s Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*** probably because I feel it delved deep into human nature and how to live a life aligned with who we are. One part in particular that resonated with me was the famous quote from Uncle Ben in the Spiderman franchise: ‘‘With great power comes great responsibility’’. Manson however, argues the opposite, that with ‘‘great responsibility comes great power’’.
I can safely say these four responsibilities have empowered me and helped change my life for the better. Taking responsibility, more so of my emotions has given me a new lease of life, and understanding that I had a power that I had at my disposal to cultivate my happiness rather than wait for the world to bring it to me (chances are I’d still be waiting!) has been nothing short of lifechanging.
In the past, I used to make excuses of why I shouldn’t be happy, now I try to reinforce all the reasons I have to be happy. That’s a huge power shift!
So long as the trajectory keeps rippling the way I want it to go, long may the momentum continue.