Patrick Schwerdtfeger is a motivational speaker who can cover the topic of happiness and how to cultivate more happiness at your next business event. Contact us to check availability. The full transcript of the above video is included below.
 

 

Full Video Transcript:

 
Hi and welcome to another edition of Strategic Business Insights. Today we’re going to talk about how to be happier. How can you be more happy? I’m going to give you seven things that you want to incorporate into your life. If you don’t have them already, these are seven things. And I’m bringing these seven things out of three different theories on happiness. I’ve done a fair amount of research on happiness and what actually makes people happy – some fascinating research on this.

So one of the blog posts that I just read recently actually broke it down to just three things, and they’re going to make up three of the seven I’ll share with you today. They basically said people who exercise, people who have sex, intimacy in their lives, and people who socialize and have relationships are happier. Exercise releases endorphins. Exercise is so important, even not necessarily for…I mean, it’s great for weight loss and so on, but just put that aside. Put the health stuff aside: When you exercise, you’re happier.

Number two, sex and intimacy. People are happy when they have intimacy in their lives. It’s very important. Like a lot of marriages, I know some friends of mine, they’re actually married and they hardly ever have sex. Even people in my own family, they’re in relationships and they’re not having sex, like hardly ever. It’s very common. This is very, very common. And a lot of it is because people, they feel self-conscious sometimes about initiating sex. It’s very difficult to do in some cases. But I encourage you: To be happier, find a way to incorporate intimacy more into your life.

And number three, relationships. Relationships are very important. And the funny thing is, when we need them the most, that’s the time when we retract and we kind of push them aside. In other words, when people are depressed, what do they do? They go to themselves. They go by themselves and they don’t hang out with people. That’s exactly when they need those relationships the most. So if you’re down, if you’re struggling in life, go out and socialize with people, be with people. It’s going to make you happier.

Alright, let’s keep going. There’s a second theory of happiness that says that essentially the first level of happiness is pleasure; the second level of happiness, which is one step up, is passion; and the third level is purpose. So pleasure we kind of already talked about. Obviously, sex falls into that category, or going out for a great meal or whatever. But passion – let’s talk about passion. That’s going to be our fourth thing to remember. Okay, we got sex, exercise, socializing, and passion.

Passion is when you’re doing something that you love, like maybe you’re painting, just like a painter – it’s a great example. Sometimes people paint and like they think they’ve been painting for 20 minutes but they’ve actually been painting for like three or four hours. When you lose track of time, that’s passion. You know you’re doing something you’re passionate about because you’re losing track of time. It could be playing a sport or it could be playing music, or it could be having a great conversation with someone about a topic you’re passionate about. Do things you’re passionate about.

So this theory that we’re talking about right now, pleasure is first, passion was second, and what’s the third one? Purpose – being part of something greater than yourself, people volunteering their time or they’re doing things for charity or they have a grand vision of something and they’re working towards some larger vision of humanity or whatever it might be. In fact, parents who have children consistently rank their lives higher with respect to purpose because their child is their purpose in life, is to make sure their child or their children live a successful, healthy and happy life. So have a purpose in your life. If you don’t have children, go volunteer, contribute to a charity, be part of something greater than yourself.

So that’s the fifth one. So we’ve got exercise, sex, socializing, passion, and purpose so far. We’ve got two left to go.

So there’s another theory of happiness that says that people who are happy have on average four things in their life. Again, these are all different studies done by different researchers, but this is another one that I really think is fascinating. So they find that people who are happy in life have four things, namely: They have a sense of perceived control, they have a sense of perceived progress, and they have relationships, and they have purpose. So we’ve already talked about two of these: We’ve talked about relationships – that’s socializing, and we’ve talked about purpose. We just talked about that in the last one. So we’ve got these two covered.

But let’s look at these first two: A sense of perceived control and a sense of perceived progress. You want to have some kind of control over your life or you want to incorporate things into your life that you have control over. Like sometimes you can feel out of control in your life because there are things in your life that other people are dictating to you. Like it could be your work that you have to be a part of or even a relationship or the demands of your children can make you feel out of control yourself – but try to incorporate something in your life that you control. It’s very, very important. If you have a sense of perceived control, it makes you happier.

And the second thing is a sense of perceived progress. What’s that all about? It’s about making goals for yourself and making small goals so that you can achieve them regularly. There was a company that had this milestone where if you had a certain job for three years you got this raise and a higher designation. They changed it to having six smaller steps every six months for three years. The step was exactly the same, the pay raise was the same, but instead of doing it in one step they did it in six small steps. And immediately their turnover—in other words, the people who left the company—their turnover went down. People were happier because every six months they had some more progress. They took a step forward. They got one step closer to their goal. They were recognized for something. So we can all do this by setting small goals in our lives, even every day or every week. Say, “I’m going to do these three things this week,” and then you can go out and do them and you have a sense of perceived progress. That’s the seventh one.

So let’s just review. We’ve got seven things that will make you happier. Get some exercise. Protect the intimacy in your life; cultivate intimacy in your life. Number three, socialize, have relationships with people. Number four, do things you’re passionate about, things that make you lose track of time. Number five, have a purpose in your life, be part of something that’s great than yourself. Maybe it’s a charity or something like that, or your children. Number six, have a sense of perceived control in your life, add things to your life that you control. And number seven, make little goals and more of them in your life so that you have a sense of perceived progress in your life. If you do those seven things—think about how you can incorporate those into your life—if you do, you’re going to be happier. The research shows it.

Thanks for watching this video. Pass it along. There are a lot of people who need this message. I found this because I was in need of it myself. My name is Patrick, reminding you as always to think bigger about your business, think bigger about your life.
 

 
Patrick Schwerdtfeger is a keynote speaker who has spoken at business conferences in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.