3 Steps to Happiness

Transcript

Welcome to those few who want to pursue a path to happiness.

Today I wanna talk about the 3 steps to Happiness.

Now I think I’ve told this story before but just to go through it a little bit. Last year 2019 I took a month to sit in meditation.

So that month I probably meditated more than I had in the last year or 2 years before that, maybe 80 or 90 hours in that month. By the end I was sitting for 5-6 hours a day trying to get to the root of what makes a person happy and what makes me happy.

One day I sat in meditation, I finished the morning mediation and I had done maybe 4 hours in the morning. It got to noon and I sat out on the balcony in that little village of Kava in Portugal.

The sun was nice and bright that day. Sometimes it’d get a bit cold in that village but that day was quite nice, I could feel the warmth on my body.

And I could feel this joy within me down in the sacrum I suppose and above that there was this feeling of happiness. In the solar plexus a feeling of satisfaction. Above that the feeling of dissatisfaction, like I want to be more!

I want to be more than all of this, I want to be the first champion of happiness and I had to laugh to myself.

I thought that’s so funny. Here I am with these crazy levels of satisfaction and happiness and on top of that dissatisfied somehow.

And I wrote this little formula with three steps to happiness.

I’m not saying this is the only route to happiness, this is just one formula. If we meditate on these questions we can find something practical.

The first step is to develop a strong desire for happiness. The second step is to create the circumstances conducive to happiness. The third step is to let go of the desire for happiness.

Now as I said that introduces some interesting questions.

The first question is how do you cultivate desire? This is actually a great question.

I think there’s actually some work on this, a famous book by Napoleon Hill Think and Grow Rich. One way is through prayer and obsession.

If you’re thinking about something constantly like keeping it in your mind “How do I do this?” Then it can help you remain focused that way you build the desire.

But yes you simply pray to have more desire for happiness, then undoubtedly you’ll get it. Of course you could also pray for happiness itself which is a valuable practice/

The second step creating the environment conducive to happiness. Again it’s a grand question because we don’t always know what is going to make us happy.

We have to keep investigating and learning about ourselves to see what helps us be in that state.

Of course it helps if you have things like money, emotional support. IF you don’t have much of a social life it helps to get a social life.

Also some simple things to get, sometimes simpler like sunshine can be difficult to get in some parts of the world.

Then meditation and exercise. There are also things like chemical things that you can do like 5HTP. I think its a precursor to dopamine. You take that stuff and it’ll help you feel happy more frequently.

Yes every individual has to explore for themselves what circumstances are going to make them the most happy.

And what things within themselves….this is an interesting thing I haven’t talked about much yet which is the vagus nerve which is a sort of key to the parasympathetic system.

I still don’t claim to know a lot about this intellectually or academically if you meditate on that nerve with your solar plexus at the sacrum then I believe a person will get more in contact with their own happiness.

The third step is letting go for the desire for happiness.

Just now I was sitting in my morning meditation for half an hour and focusing on happiness and by the end of the meditation I go to this interesting place of letting go. I started to let go of not just the desire for happiness but a bunch of other little things from the past, little fantasies that I have.

Oh I would like to be able to do that one day, what does it say about me if I don’t have this? And I just started to let that all go because in the end those things don’t really matter.

Happiness is much more valuable than any whim which is interesting to experience that state, being this blank state just letting go of any whim or fantasy because there’s no need to feel any lack.

If you want to feel lack go ahead and feel it but you don’t have to. You can let it go at any moment.

Of course its a key step when you learn mediation in the second step it will eventually help you in the third step to let go.

Everything kind of ties in together nicely.

So three steps once again.
Develop a strong desire for happiness.
Create the conditions conducive to happiness.
Let go for the desire for happiness.

And maybe let go for the desire for anything at all, that is to say let go of the feeling of lack which sometimes accompany desires.

Desires by themselves you might experience, there’s nothing wrong with desires.

But how we interpret them and if we layer this level of lack on them that can inhibit us from happiness.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for being grateful, thank you for letting go of those desires that are accompanied by any feeling of lack.

Thank you for embracing the moment and enjoying the wonderful process we are involved with.

Have a wonderful day!