Happy as a 5 year old

A Personal Observation

I think 5 year olds have cracked the secret to happiness.

Setting Expectations and a Little Background

I have two kids — 3 and 5 — a boy and a girl. They inspire me to share random moments and thoughts like this one and this one, and also to be a better person to others and myself. I don’t take part in social networks anymore except for LinkedIn and even there I’ve become a lurker that mainly looks for interesting content to read or like notifications of people’s promotions or new roles. But in the two instances which I linked to above, there was something about the behaviors I saw in my kids that pushed me to want to share that experience/thoughts with others. I was sure my posts would go by unnoticed at best since I thought they’d likely get mocked for being too touchy feely. But once I posted them what happened next surprised the hell out of me…they got tens of thousands of views, hundreds of likes and dozens of comments. For perspective — I’ve never gotten more than one or two likes on a LinkedIn post over the years.

This post is just my opinion, not a preach, so please take it as such. If this post helps even one person in this world live even just a slightly happier life, then it has gone above and beyond any of my expectations.

Why I “Observe”

Over the years I’ve become very curious about self help, happiness and positivity and how it can affect one’s life, so like anyone else I started to read books on the matter. They each talk about the same things like being present, mindful, thankful etc. and as we became parents, I grew very aware of these qualities or the lack thereof in the people around me, especially those that I spend so much time with — my children. I started to become very curious about their behaviors and saw a lot of very positive qualities “built-in”. But more on that in just a moment.

An Equation That Stood Out

I recently came across Mo Gawdat’s 1 Billion Happy movement which I found absolutely wonderful and which got me interested in listening to his audio book Solve for Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy. What stood out for me was his happiness equation which looks like this:

Simply put it shows how the balance between expectations and attitude to life’s events affects happiness.

I thought this was great since it’s so simply put and easy to digest.

The Self Help Not-So-Helpful Paradox

What I noticed after finishing that book, though, and every other book on the topic, is that they’re usually written by super accomplished people like highly regarded specialists, PhD’s, very successful business people etc. which at first inspires you due to their credibility and status but over time starts to fade and feel like someone you can’t really relate to because let’s face it, most of us are mere mortals. Once the book is done we don’t have those authors as personal coaches constantly reminding us to focus, internalize and implement their advice. So we slip, until we find another book. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting to just give up. What I’m saying is it often comes in short lived spurts vs. something you can easily relate to and make part of who you are — due to the simple fact that they are not you and they drip with having all the answers to the questions, which reminds you that you don’t.

Cue The 5 Year Old’s

This brings me back to my original opinion:

I think 5 year olds have cracked the secret to happiness.

Why?

First off you can relate to a 5 year old because you were one or maybe have one. Most of us weren’t Tony Robbins or the Chief Business Officer at Google ;)

The behaviors 5 year olds engage with is something we all did at one point which means it’s in us to do it again.

What are these behaviors? To name a few:

• Live 100% in the moment — they don’t care what happened two hours ago or about what tomorrow will be like. They are always in the here and now.
• Fall down and get right back up — they’re constantly learning new things and failing miserably at them. But they just keep going or they immediately place their attention elsewhere without looking back. No grudges or living in the past.
• Feel to the fullest — when they hurt they cry their eyes out, when they laugh it’s uncontrollable, when they’re angry they throw glorious tantrums. Not suggesting we act out our emotions to their fullest in public, but the emphasis here is that they give their emotions the opportunity to go wide and deep. But it’s short lived usually, since when they’re done feeling, they move right on to the next moment and immerse themselves in it.
• Awesome at being afraid — they have rational and irrational fears but they never mask them or beat themselves over the head for being afraid of something. It’s part of being human and it’s ok to not be perfect.
• Perfectly imperfect — they are who they are. Not who they want you to think they are.
• Open minded — no preconceived concept of knowledge. Learning is above all.
• Curious and ask questions all the time — their world is constantly expanding at an exponential rate.
• No expectations from life — all they deserve in their eyes is ice cream and toys. So when they get even an ounce more, it’s WOW time.
• Marvel at the beauty of the simplest things and notice everything — have you ever noticed that you can buy your kids the most elaborate toys only to see them spending hours playing with an empty milk carton? Just travel with your 5 year old somewhere you were before you had kids and they’ll make you notice about 1,000 things you didn’t even know were there.
• Place a high emphasis on social interactions — kids play hard and play time is one of the most important activities in their day.
• Are physically active — not just in proper sports. Everything they do is a fully immersive physical activity in which they use their bodies as the vehicles they’re meant to be. Whether is running up a flight of stairs, dancing when they hear music or jumping up and down on a bed.
• SMILE — again this is not scientific, but my gut tells me that 5 year olds smile an order of magnitude more times a day that the average adult.
• Dream and imagine BIG — they’re all already astronauts, princesses and superheroes. They don’t let anything keep their imagination inhibited.
• Solve for the happiness equation impeccably — who do you think as a population is happier: adults or kids? I’m going to venture with kids.

Key Takeaway — Ask Yourself 2 Simple Questions

5 year olds aren’t all roses, far from it. Of course a lot of the healthy behaviors and emotions they demonstrate naturally are due to the developmental stage they are in their lives, and comparing adults to children is absolutely an apples to oranges approach. But that’s not the approach here.

The idea here is when you’re trying to better yourself and your mental state, it helps to find something/someone you can easily relate to. Furthermore it helps to know you once possessed highly coveted and healthy behavioral traits — naturally and effortlessly — because that means you can tap back into them, as they are part of who we all are at our core.

So I urge you constantly ask yourself two simple questions:

1. If I live my life today with even some of the same behaviors I had at age 5, could my life be better?
2. What would 5 year old me do?

I’ve found that asking either one or both of these questions dramatically simplifies most situations, and most importantly, compares me only to myself and no one else.

One Last Thing

Try to imagine in whatever you do, that the 5 year old you is always with you and watching you, looking up to you, positive that you’re the best they’ve ever seen. Lead by example, to yourself first and foremost. And remember, no matter what you do, you’re already the hero for the 5 year old you. So stop being so hard on yourself.