What is the holy grail? The north star?

I have read hundreds of books, read autobiographies, studied people and societies. Observed variety of people. And did thousands of large and small experiments with my own life.

And based on my experience, I’ve concluded that the secret to lead a great life (lead, not live) is sustainable happiness.

Why sustainable happiness?

Normally, happiness comes and goes for most people. Happiness, though a subjective concept for many, has a few common characteristics.

For starters, it’s the absence of worry, anxiety, sadness, stress etc i.e. all the bad emotions for a normal person. This is when people say “I’m feeling good“.

And then, it’s a state of ecstasy which people call “being super happy“. Which can be derived from achieving a goal, having sex, getting a huge paycheck, getting a “yes“ for marriage proposal, getting promotion etc.

The secret of leading a great life is to remain “I’m feeling good“ stage for as much and as long as possible.

Ecstatic happiness will feel great, but it is sporadic. Out of your control at times. And does not last long.

Sure, you can aim for it and reap the rewards, but if you define and attach your state of well-being to it, you’ll be in for a bumpy ride.

There you have it. You need to aim to have sustainable happiness to lead a great life which is mainly absence of all the negative emotions.

How to reach that stage? And most importantly, how to stay in that stage?

Sustainable happiness stands on 4 pillars

• Health

• Wealth

• Relationships

• Craft

Take any one out of these and you’ll be happy but only sporadically.

Let’s walk through these one by one.

• Health

I can not overstate the importance of being healthy.

How do you become healthy?

Becoming healthy is more of a process than a state. It relies on regular exercise, good nutrition and recovery i.e. good adequate sleep.

Also, becoming healthy is a mindset change way before it’s physical.

Some hacks to start

• Figure out what kind of exercises you like - do you like weight training or HIIT or some other activity? Focus on that one and ignore the rest.

• For diet - just quit sugar. Then quit packaged foods.

• For sleep, start tracking. Aim for 8 hours and see how short you fall.

I’ll write more about these in the upcoming posts. But this should be a good start if you haven’t done anything prior.

• Wealth

What is wealth?

It’s not your salary. Salary is just cash in (and a good amount at).

Wealth is your long-term plan to stay rich. And not just cash-rich, but asset-rich.

Questions that have hounded me my entire life.

In my early twenties, I thought the answer is money. I must make insane amount of money, I kept telling myself.

I subscribed to hustle porn. Hours and hours of “work“.

Deep inside I knew I wasn’t enjoying it. It wasn’t for me. I had no hobbies or anything outside work per se. But hey, I wanted to be rich. So I needed to work hard, right? Right?

In late twenties, I realised only money is not enough. What good is money if I’m not healthy to enjoy it? My first life-changing epiphany.

I joined a gym. Started focusing on my diet. Took sleep seriously.

But my hustle porn mindset came in between confusing my mind to its limits.

This is when my relationships helped. Honestly, I had not put any real effort in building these. I’m fortunate to come from a well-off loved family.

I found the love of my life when I was 19 and got married 8 years later. Fortunate, again. Without these strong relationship, things would have been broken me.

I only learned how valuable these relationships are during this period. Prior to this, I just took those for granted.

What I had were the first-world problems? I don’t know.

At this moment, I don’t think so.

However, back then, I would have shrugged them off as those had I not been affected directly.

But I would have been wrong, 100%. A problem to a person is subjective. And unless you have been through exact circumstances with the same variables (which I’m sure is probabilistically impossible), you or I have no right to judge. Anyhow.

My outlook towards life at this point was standing on three things - health, wealth, relationships.

• Health

• Wealth

• Relationships

• Craft