Alfred Hitchcock said happiness is a clear horizon free of hatred. The host shares an exercise from his book Your One Word: list moments that made you feel alive, find the common theme, and distill it into one core value. He chose "belief" and explains how aligning your life with this word creates purpose and lasting happiness.
Good morning, Believe Nation! Today's message is Define Happiness for Yourself. Over to you, Alfred Hitchcock. I wake up every morning, espresso keeps me going. I wake up every morning.
Mr. Hitchcock, what is your definition of happiness? A clear horizon. Nothing to worry about on your plate, only things that are creative and not destructive. I think that's within yourself. Within me, I can't bear quarreling, I can't bear feelings between people. I think hatred is wasted energy. And it's all non-productive. I'm very sensitive. A sharp word said by, say, a person who has a temper, if they're close to me, hurts me for days. I know we're only human. We do go in for these various emotions. Call them negative emotions. But when all these are removed and you can look forward and the road is clear ahead, and now you're going to create something, I think that's as happy as I would ever want to be.
I think this is one of the most important exercises that you can do, not just as an entrepreneur, but as a human being, to understand what happiness looks like for you so that you can build a life and a business that makes you happier. Self-awareness is important. It's why I wrote the book, Your One Word, to understand what is the thing that makes you come alive and understanding that, understanding what your one main core value is that you love and then being proactive in going after that. And so in the book, we go through that exercise of thinking about everything that has made you come alive in the past. What makes you happy? Make a list of all the things that make you happy. The movies you watch and the people in your life and what you loved about your parents and whoever your favorite teacher was of the hundreds of teachers that you had, the one or two people that stood out. What was it about them? What were the highest highs in your life? What were you doing? What are the activities that make you come alive? And to build a happy life, you want to be around that as much as possible. You want to be doing things that make you come alive, right? Who wants a life that is boring, that you're doing stuff that is just repetitive and beneath you consistently. Nobody wants that life. But doing the things that create the spark for you, that add tons of value to other people's lives, that give you that proud feeling of the work that you're doing is contributing, that's what you want to get to. And so making that list of all the things that make you come alive and then finding What's the common theme between all of those things? For me, it's belief. You know, I've talked about my favorite movie is Seabiscuit. It's about this undersized horse, an oversized jockey, an owner that had no money, that everybody was counting out, and somehow those 3 guys all came together and they won a ton of races. They beat all the odds. That underdog story of believe. And my parents told me I was like a Strelitz Carmichael. I could do anything I wanted. Is believe. And my favorite teachers were about believe, and the people that I want to surround myself with need to be about believe. And why it's so important is 'cause understanding what value is so important to me and was in the past now lets me build a future that's better. So I can build a business around believe. I can bring teammates on board who believe and believe. I can be more proactive instead of having life happen to me by accident or instead of even worse, having other people's projections of what I should do impact me. If you don't know what you stand for, you will fall for anything. You'll just be walking around living up to other people's expectations instead of doing the thing that you wanna do. But a lot of people don't have the clarity. A lot of people walk through life feeling like they could be doing way more. You know that you could be doing way more in your life than you're currently doing right now, but you don't know what to do because you're not clear on what your value is. You're not clear what you stand for, so you can't build that ideal life. In my view, I'm biased, I wrote a book about it, but in my view, it's one of the single most important exercises that you can ever do in your life, whether you're an entrepreneur or not, to understand what it is that makes you happy, what your most important core value is for you, has always been, always will be, and then with design, with intent, with purpose, building a life and a business around it that will make you happy forever. Imagine that. It's possible, it's achievable, and I want it for you. So the question of the day today is, how do you define happiness for yourself? What is your one word? Leave it in the comments below. I'm gonna join in the discussion. I also wanna give a quick shout out to Regina Ross from reginasbeautyboutique.com. Thank you so much, Regina, for picking up a copy of my book, "Your One Word." It really, really, really, really means a lot to me. Thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso. <LYRICS>I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.</LYRICS>
