There are, I believe, 5 aspects of life that are absolutely essential to work on in order to achieve true happiness. Those 5 aspects, I call the pillars because they are the part of your happiness house that continue to grow and expand as you up-level.
Your happiness house is an analogy, a model that I created to help simplify what happiness is. It breaks down and makes clear what exactly creates true happiness and showcases to you what you can work on to improve your happiness levels.
The most important thing to know about your happiness
In order to understand my analogy and the most important thing that you get from this article is that happiness is energy. The more you protect and work on your energy, the more you’re protecting and working your happiness.
Happiness = energy.
Protecting and working on your energy is so important because it’s what allows you to live a high vibe life. Energy vibrates and the more you work at vibrating at a higher frequency, the more your happiness will improve.
There is an energy scale and emotions such as fear, guilt and shame are lower on the scale. These feelings cause things such as anxiety and stress which I’m sure you can agree with me are not great feelings.
Feelings such as happiness, joy and bliss are high vibe emotions. They’re feelings that make you physically feel better and better. They’re feel good emotions. And to simplify things even more, emotions (aka feelings) are just energy in motion.
This is why it’s so important for you to understand that protecting your energy is also protecting your happiness. The more you’re able to keep your energy vibing high in the frequency of happiness the more frequently you’ll be and feel happy.
The Happiness House analogy
Now that you understand that protecting your energy is the same as protecting your happiness, it’s time to build your happiness house. Your happiness house is where you store and protect your energy.
All parts of your happiness house are used to protect your 5 pillars of happiness that you will always be working on.
The base of your house must be absolutely solid before you begin to build. Your pillars are what continuously grow as you work on them and your roof is what keeps the aspects of your life that you’re working on safe while building your pillars.
The Base
The base of your house is divided into three parts that will help keep you solid. These three parts of your life are the factors that keep you grounded and give you the driving force, the motivation you need to keep building your pillars.
Your base includes your values, your purpose and your passions.
Together, these three parts of your base allow you to have a strong why. See these parts of your life as your guiding compass that tells you which direction to go in, which area of your life that you need to work on and how to know which path to take.
Your values are the things that are most important to you in your life. This could be your family, it could be connection with yourself, it could be wealth. Whatever your values are, and these can be very similar to the 5 pillars, help to guide you in the direction that makes most sense for you. They continue to remind you of what’s important to you.
Your purpose is the reason you believe you’re here. Your purpose could be to help others feel more connected to their sexuality, it could be to help business owners make 6 figures, it could be to help children find suitable homes. Your purpose is the one thing that gives you meaning to wake up in the morning.
Your passions are the things that get you really excited. They can be closely related to your purpose or they can be completely different, totally unrelated. Perhaps one of your passions is to dance, or maybe it’s painting. It could be online gaming or helping people file their taxes. Whatever your passions are, understanding that you have them and that those things bring you joy, no matter if they’re related to your purpose or not will help you to understand which pillars to work on building.
The 5 Pillars of Happiness
The pillars are the most essential part of your happiness house because they are what you will constantly be working on throughout your life. You never stop building your pillars so long as you’re living.
This is because as humans our growing never stops, we’re always up-levelling, we’re always figuring out new ways to challenge ourselves. When we sit doing nothing or doing the same thing over and over we feel unfulfilled and this stops our happiness from increasing. In fact, it often does just the opposite, it begins to make us feel worse.
The 5 pillars include: growth, movement and nourishment, connection, reflection and giving.
You do not have to work on all of these pillars at the same time. That’s pretty damn overwhelming. But all of these pillars need to be worked on in order to achieve true happiness and to feel completely fulfilled.
You may not be called to work on all of these but there will be a time in your life when you do feel called to.
The first pillar, growth, is growth in relation to yourself through personal development and also spiritually. You can not expect to up-level your life and for your happiness to improve if you don’t work on self-improvement. There is a reason why you’re not truly happy and that is guaranteed because of something you can work on inside yourself. Happiness is an inside job.
I included spirituality as well because growing spirituality allows you to have a deeper sense of purpose, connection and takes the pressure off of having the weight of the world on your shoulders.
The second pillar, movement and nourishment, are essential because both greatly affect your energy. Movement allows you to move energy throughout your body and also allows you to release and let go of any negative energy that may have built up. Just as important is nourishment. Choosing to nourish your body by taking care of it through self-care and feeding yourself foods that will fuel you instead of make you feel worse help an incredible amount in keeping you high vibe.
The third pillar, connection, refers to your connection with yourself, with others as well as spiritually. Your connection with yourself can be further broken down into mind, body and soul. The more connected you become with yourself, the more you’re able to trust yourself, your intuition and live a life with more ease.
Your connection to others is also important because as humans we are very social creatures. We crave community. Without a community, without people who are on the path same of us or who are interested in the same things, we lack a deeper sense of connection. A connection with others can also include a romantic connection with a partner.
A spiritual connection is a connection to a higher power. Whether you prefer to use the term the Universe, Source, Creator or God, all are connections with a higher power that give you a sense of deeper meaning for your life. A spiritual connection is often overlooked but gives us, as humans, the space to create our lives and believe that there is more than just our daily tasks.
The fourth pillar, reflection, is essential in order to be able to grow. Without looking back to see our mistakes, the missteps and the actions that were less than ideal, how are you supposed to know how to grow? Being able to reflect on your past allows you to continue moving forward in the right direction.
The final pillar, giving, gives us a deeper meaning for life than just us as individuals. Giving can come in many different shapes or forms. It doesn’t necessarily have to be giving food to a food bank or money to a charity. Giving could be teaching others how to do something that you’re deeply passionate about. Giving is considered giving so long as you are contributing to the greater good and not just doing it for yourself.
The Roof
The final part of your happiness house is your roof which protects yourself from self-sabotaging your hard work and others from coming in and ruining what you’re working to build.
Your roof are your boundaries. Your boundaries are what keep you in your safe space where you’re able to continue building on the habits that you’ve set in place for yourself, the habits that keep you happy and your energy vibing high.
How to use the Happiness House in your daily life
I get that this is a lot of information and that you’re presented with a ton of different ways that you can begin approaching your happiness. You’re not expected to go out and to work on all of these at once. That’s pretty damn overwhelming!
I suggest reading over the pillars again and seeing which pillar calls out to you most. Which pillar seems like it would be the easiest for your to incorporate into your life right now? Decide and then start looking for ways that you can begin to practice that pillar in your life.
The good thing is that sometimes one activity, for example, meditation, can help you build multiple pillars at once. Meditation gives you a deeper connection with your mind, body and it can also connect you spiritually. Meditation also connects to personal development because it contributes to your mental health and teaches you the power of your subconscious thoughts.
Pick what area, what pillar, is calling to you and work on that. So long as you start building somewhere you’re doing something to contribute to your energy and ultimately, your happiness.
You deserve to be the happiest version of yourself every day. Your happiness house will only start being built when you start building and make a commitment to yourself. You’ve got this.