Welcome back to The Happiness Portfolio, I hope thinking about sources of happiness produced a lengthy list of the many sources of joy in your life! The first time I tried all I was able to come up with was five things, including Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, smoking hookah, and eating spicy fried chicken sandwiches. Shoutout to Howlin’ Ray’s, if you’re ever in/around LA check them out! Just listen to their recommendations on spice, or don’t - but be prepared to take a seat on the throne of consequences.
In addition to Nashville hot chicken recs, today we’ll be talking about different sources of happiness and how you can use your knowledge of those sources to your advantage.
Prompt: What type of things make me happy?
Perspective
After I thought about how little I had previously considered what made me happy, the next thing that stuck out to me was how many of them involved food.
What about Howlin Ray’s fried chicken sandwiches make me happy?
Growing up in an Italian American family (no points awarded for guessing this based on my last name) food was a triple threat. It was often used to celebrate, as an opportunity to get together with friends and family, and as a way to show off my skills in the kitchen.
Looking at my list helped me come to that realization by asking “What about Howlin Ray’s fried chicken sandwiches make me happy?” and prompted me to add some new items to my list including spending time with certain family and friends.
If you’d like to expand your list, I’d invite you to ask the same question about a few of your sources of happiness and see if there aren’t some additional ones nestled in.
Practice
Now that you have a list of sources of happiness, spend five to ten minutes over the next two weeks thinking about how you might categorize them. I stole the below categories from a Tony Robbins seminar1 that my dad attended 20+ years ago:
Spirituality
Physical Health
Relationships
Career
Finance
Personal
I enjoy how nice and simple they are, but if they don’t work for you or a different categorization works better - use it!
Once you’ve decided on your categorization scheme, start sorting your sources of happiness into different buckets until everything has a home. Throughout this process, if additional sources of happiness come up feel free to drop them in as you go, and don’t worry too much about edge cases. It’s just happiness.
Once you’ve finished the great sort take a look at your happiness portfolio. What kind of story does it tell?
Thank you for taking the time out of your day to continue this conversation and for being open to this practice. I’ll see you in two weeks when we’ll discuss the benefits of diversifying your happiness portfolio.
Until then, be well, and if you come up with any interesting ways of slicing/dicing happiness send them my way by replying to this email. I’d love to hear them!
Sorting Happiness
I will be prepared to take a seat on the throne of consequences next time I visit LA haha.
The six sources of happiness are a great starting point, and although I know some will be difficult to find, I won't sweat it because, well, it's just happiness. Thanks for sharing!