My past belief and approach

I was convinced that a happy life is about success and success was primarily defined through the amount of money I could make and the toys I could afford. Once you have that island, the yacht and the luxury cars everything else will fall in place. Your mum and you guys will be happy, I will attract amazing friends and we would live a life of abundance and fulfillment. At the end I would die with a cigar in my mouth, a rum and coke in my hand and my last words would be “woohaa, what a ride”.

Doesn´t sound too bad, right? Well, to me, there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting all these things and striving for monetary abundance. However, there are so many examples of people who have achieved all of that and are absolutely miserable. Billionaires have committed suicide and others with an abundance of money just seem to be frustrated or angry all the time, yelling at people and numbing the pain of their life with drugs or alcohol. In the end money just makes people more of what they are. An asshole becomes a bigger asshole, a saint a greater saint. So money is just a tool, that gives you more options, but it doesn´t lead to happiness and fulfillment. So what does?

What I learned in one sentence:

The purpose of life is to grow and to give, you grow to be able to give more. Your ability to give more will lead to making the world a better place, which leads to lasting happiness and fulfillment for yourself.

My three biggest learnings

  1. Happiness and Fulfillment are very different things
    Happiness short term and just serves you. Alcohol, sweets, surfing any dopamine. Fulfilment long term and serves others

  2. Happiness Distribution:
    50% of your happiness is genetics, you are born with a certain level of happiness. 10% actually are the things most people in the western world strive for: Money, fame, popularity, however money only has a great impact if you go from 0 to covering basic needs like shelter and food. After that money has close to no impact on happiness (it doesn´t matter whether your earn 100.000 a year or 10 billion a year). 40% of your happiness is driven by the following five things, we are able to control ourselves:

    • Play; Booster: Moving, Sports

    • Variety; Booster: Do sth abnormal e.g. run in monkey costume

    • Relationships; Booster: with people that have your back/complete reliability

    • Giving/Contribution: Booster: Help other people

    • Gratitude

  3. Growth & Contribution
    If you constantly work on growing, growing to become a better husband, a better father, a better colleague, a better leader, a better athlete you will have so much more love and energy to give to this world, which will ultimately not only serve yourself, but it will serve your family as well as your friends, your community and the world. Probably the ultimate achievement in life is if you have been able to find more pleasure in giving to others than in making gains for yourself. Grow and give and you will find yourself living a life of fulfillment and happiness. So growing and giving leads to happiness and fulfilment and is equally the purpose of life, the more we grow, the more we can give, the more we can give, the better the world gets. Progress equals Happiness

My three most impactful actions for execution:

  1. Progress equals the quality of questions Change your questions, change your life!

  2. Prime yourself for happiness: Best morning Routine I found:

    1. Flood your body with water

    2. Flood your body with oxygen

    3. Flood your body with Gratitude

    4. Get clear on what you want for the day, not what you have to do

    5. Exercise for at least 30 min

  3. So many habits, big 5 daily are: 1. Exercise min 30min, 2. Feed your mind, 3. Drink enough water, 4. Gratitude and 5. Clarity what you want, not what you have to do