Living In Harmony

Although I have been exploring happiness and what it means to be happy my whole life, it wasn’t until I introduced the concept of harmony into my thinking that I really started to create a picture of what true happiness is.

At each stage of my life I have made big decisions: going away to college, working in the Middle East, going to business school, and coming to Scandinavia with no network or language skills to find a job.  The challenges grew in intensity and each required more effort and fortitude.  Yet I still wasn’t happy even after finding the “dream job” in Denmark working in renewable energy. This culminated in my decision to quit and pursue my passions (like this blog!).  Something was off balance and that’s when I realized I was lacking harmony. I wasn’t living in harmony.

To me, harmony means being in touch with both yourself and your environment and seamlessly coexisting together with mutual respect, gratitude, and commitment.  I lacked this.  It wasn’t just because I was a foreigner in every place I lived since college.  In some ways I felt like even more of an outsider during college.  I was closed, metaphorically, to many things that were important in my environment.  I wasn’t competent or aware enough to realize that there was something in my life that was missing, and then how to go about fixing that.

I think being truly open with yourself and your environment fosters a 1+1=3 relationship where together the connection enables and facilitates more growth than either party could be alone.  In my particular case, my goal in life is to give back to the world more than it gave me.  These are simple words to live by, but extremely difficult words to make come true.  It is only in such a 1+1=3 relationship where this is possible to achieve.

What is the environment I keep speaking of?  To me, it’s your surroundings: loved ones, friends, nature, animals, and anyone/anything else you come in contact with.

In business school I learned a lot about networking and being open and helpful so that professional karma can benefit you at present and in the future.  Networking lays the foundation you stand upon and allows you to leverage relationships and knowledge.  But why isn’t it the same in normal life away from the career?

It wasn’t until I went to Spain that I realized how important it was for me to spend time outdoors in nature.  Every evening I would go for a walk.  Sometimes it was through the streets of Madrid and other times a nearby park.  It was a time to reflect, collect my thoughts, appreciate the beauty of the city, and regain some balance.  No matter how hectic the day was, I knew that I would enjoy my walk and I would be reenergized after I spent some time outside breathing fresh air.  It seems like a silly thing in retrospect, but it really worked for me.  And even to this day I make sure I spend a certain amount of time outside in nature every day and every weekend.

In my case it was nature, but in yours it could be something else.  Open your mind and your heart and just feel alive.  Quite often you’ll find that what you’re lacking is not wealth or products, but experiences and love.  Think about the experiences you enjoy, or ways to incorporate more love in your life.  Given my experience, I am biased and maybe I am missing a major category, but in the end it all goes back to the three pillars. Chances are that when you have achieved balance among love, purpose, and health you will have achieved harmony.

What about you?  How did you achieve harmony in your life?  Please share your experience with us in the comments!