In this episode of The Lifehack Show, we have invited Alice Inoue, Founder & Life Guide at Happiness U — a business with a purpose to help individuals find unprecedented clarity, to join us.
Alice is an award-winning author and life guidance expert who has dedicated her life to helping others find answers to life’s challenges. As one of Hawaii’s thought leaders and celebrated expert, thousands of individuals have found clarity over the past 20+ years through her work. Her unique brand of life wisdom is featured in her eight books on self-growth and happiness, as well as in her long-running column in MidWeek, Hawaii’s largest publication with 200k readers.
In this episode, Alice shares about her journey on realizing her purpose in life and has some practical tips for anyone is looking for clarity in life.
Check out the full interview here:
Here I’ll highlight some of the great insights from the interview.
The Purpose of Life Is Not About Happiness
As opposed to what many believe, the purpose of life is not about happiness. Think about it, if the purpose of life is happiness, then when all the crummy stuff happens to us, we will feel that we are not living a purpose at all. In reality, we will all face challenging moments and feel sad and frustrated often.
I have to accept the good and the bad, the positive and the negative, and the whole of it is what makes life good. And if I can accept that and I’m growing through it, then I’m fulfilled and then I’m happy. — Alice Inoue
The purpose of life is about growing and learning, and finding more of who you are and what you’re capable of.
Accepting where you are, whether you’re facing a great challenge or failure, is the first step. Once you have learned how to accept your circumstances, you know you need to take actions to get over them. This is how you grow and become a better person. The process of ever-learning and growing is the purpose of life.
Life is like two sides of a coin. It’s so valuable to recognize that you can’t have one without the other, so you may as well accept it. And once we accept it, that’s where the process of happiness. — Alice Inoue
You Find Happiness Where You Find Your Purpose
Happiness is what makes us feel good, it could be something meaningful or purposeful.
For example, if you helped someone opened a door that they couldn’t do it, and they said “thank you so much,” you would feel good; or when you have accomplished something, you feel good.
How to know what makes you feel good? Alice suggests asking yourself these 2 questions:
- Where am I teaching every day?
- Where am I learning every day?
Try to reflect about your everyday life:
Are you a mother figure or a father figure to someone? Are you a connector to some people — say recommending someone to a person, a business or a service for good experience? Are you providing support or a nurturing experience to some people?
These simple questions help you to realize that you are a meaningful part of this world.
We probably can all identify oh I’m learning from YouTube, I’m teaching my child how to brush their teeth, or I’m teaching Executives how to coach… By asking yourself simple stuff, you recognize that you actually have a purpose. — Alice Inoue
Being Unclear About Life Actually Helps You Gain Clarity
We can never be absolutely clear about all the aspects of life, including our future. What we need to do is to accept that life is complex and will never be perfectly clear. The clarity we should go for is to focus on the one thing we can do today to move towards a greater clarity. What is unclear today can actually leads us to gain more clarity tomorrow.
Alice shares a story in the interview:
A man came to Alice and told her that he didn’t make enough money. He always thought that if he could make more money, then he could buy better gifts for friends and family. He always blamed his job for not paying him much. Then Alice asked him: “Do you have a a bank account? Do you have savings? Do you have a credit card?” And his answers were all yes. The truth was, he didn’t buy expensive gifts for others because he chose not to. It wasn’t because of not having enough money, but he chose to save the money for his children’s school.
These simple questions helped the man gain clarity in life.
Own your decisions. Don’t blame the company or other people. You can (do something) if you want to, you’re just choosing not to. Don’t fool yourself about something that you’re actually owning — this is what clarity is like. — Alice Inoue
Moving towards a greater clarity isn’t something instant, it doesn’t happen with just one positive thought. It’s a mindset shift that takes time and requires commitment of practice.
We’re so lazy we believe every thought that comes out. We believe stuff that we’re told that we never research, so we’re just half a bunch of garbage sometimes in our head that we’re living by. That’s our map and no wonder we’re not happy. — Alice Inoue
We have to start to identify where our belief systems are off, and where we’re looking that’s not taking us in the right direction. This is how we can gradually gain clarity. We must first find out where we are at and then go from there.
Final Thoughts
If you’re feeling lost and overwhelmed in life, this interview with Alice will help you gain insights to find clarity in life so you can start to figure out ways to work towards the life and goals you want to have.
Finding life purpose and happiness in life surely isn’t easy. But you have a life-time to learn and grow to become a better self every day!
