For thirteen very long years I struggled to find a way to be healthy and happy.

The desperation to turn my health around led me to search high and low for answers.

Believe me there’s a lot of fluff out there in the medical and health industries but eventually I discovered by experience, that actually, health and happiness creation is about just a few ideas pursued with dogged persistence.

Although there are many factors to happiness, it turned out that underlying all the different factors is just one that’s so important, that without really harnessing it, all your attempts to be happy are doomed to failure.

This report is about the mindset of happiness… the mindset that leads to understanding just why that one factor is so important and why it’s overlooked—it’s literally a secret.

It’s a secret because it’s a psychological principle that’s tricky to understand and apply easily—so naturally, health professionals have tended to downplay it or miss it entirely. But without it you’ll struggle to put the conditions for happiness in place.

The secret has even been overlooked by psychology until very recently which is quite amazing considering its importance. But don’t spoil the fun and jump to the end to find out what the secret is because without the thought process that goes before it, you won’t value it as much or give it due attention—and it deserves a lot of your attention.

There are many obstacles to your happiness in this crazy modern world we live in—and so I’ll explain what they are and why they exist. But there’s a lot to get through in just a few pages. So I won’t be pulling any punches in this report.

Your health and happiness is at stake so I’ll be telling it like it is—fluff-free and no waffle. I hope you enjoy reading The Happiness Secret and I hope with all my heart, that by applying the information, you can experience health and happiness on a level that you’ve never known before, except maybe as a child. So without further ado, let’s get on with it!

Part 1 — The Causes of Unhappiness

Where are we?

Nearly half of all deaths are caused by heart disease and cancer. Two thirds of Americans are overweight and one third of the adult population obese!

Very shocking but what difference does it make how many, if you are sick and suffering? What does it matter how many, if you can’t cope with life because you’re depressed? And nobody ever thought it would be them to hear the words “I’m sorry to have to tell you; you have cancer.”

But the statistics do tell a story: Our modern lifestyles are causing pain and suffering on a massive scale. Beyond the measurable disease rates and perhaps the saddest part of modern living is that our moods are flattened and our joy for life snuffed out by poor lifestyles. Continuous stress and struggle becomes our accepted normality.

Where did it all go wrong?

The very simple truth is that your genes expect a certain environment. The environment your genes expect is the one that existed before the dawn of agriculture. That’s only 500 generations ago or less—when we ate food directly from nature and had to work hard to get it.

In nature, genetics and the environment are exquisitely balanced because over time, the best, most well adapted genes are more likely to be passed on. The more I look into what makes us happy and healthy, the more it becomes crystal clear that it’s when our behavior and environment is out-of-sync with what our genes expect that we get sick and suffer.

The human body is incredibly adaptable. It’s not that the environment needs to be so strictly defined. But what our bodies just cannot deal with is modern processed foods, little exercise and stress over decades. Although we can adapt well, there are limits that our bodies can cope with over a long time frame.

The chronic diseases that are killing us, that make us sick, fat and depressed are even called “lifestyle diseases.”

A pill for your ill?

If it’s our lifestyles that are the root cause of chronic disease and unhappiness, is it reasonable to expect drugs or surgery to cure our ills? It’s very disempowering to believe that if you get sick, your doctor can bail you out, because it stops you taking responsibility for staying well now—being proactive.

The first question to ask ourselves if we feel out-of sorts, unhappy or sick is “Why did that symptom show up?” “What are the true underlying causes?”

You simply can’t get health or happiness from a pill. Drugs are like using a sledge hammer to crack your biochemical nut. Your biochemistry is incredibly complex and self-regulating given the right conditions. A true cure for any chronic disease is correction of the original cause—the reason it showed up in the first place.

Do you get a headache because your body lacks aspirin?

If someone’s depressed, has their brain suddenly stopped making serotonin for no reason? Isn’t it madness to treat depression with drugs that increase serotonin in the brain if the cause is chronic lack of sleep, poor diet, overstimulation with caffeine and a mindset that means they drive themselves to exhaustion?

Drugs often attempt to correct the symptom, the effect and not the true cause. Anti-depressants do nothing to affect the true causes and so leave the poor person dependant on drugs to feel “normal.” If the drug is stopped, the dysfunctional biochemistry is still there.

Isn’t it madness to cut someone open and staple their stomach to stop them eating when the person needs quality information, motivation, support, empowerment and permanent lifestyle shifts?

In many cases where drugs or surgery are used, there is a better way—a way that corrects the root cause of the problem. Drugs exist because they sell, because we demand a quick fix. They sell because we buy into the pill-for-an-ill mindset and refuse or struggle or don’t know how to change our behavior. What is demanded will be supplied—it always has and always will.

Information overload

Once you’ve suffered enough pain from not living well enough and once you’ve decided to put your health and happiness first—what do you do? You hunt for information. And pretty soon you’re drowning in a sea of conflicting information about what’s the best way to live.

Or perhaps with a “beginners mind” you simply pick a book that looks good in the bookstore and throw yourself into the first program that appeals.

Either way is not great. The seekers of the best lifestyle will rapidly become frustrated because in every area of health, especially diet and exercise, there is very little agreement amongst “experts.”

The one with beginners mind is probably better off but he or she is in a lottery. She may get lucky and pick up the right book or she may not. The advice you get from your book store is literally a lottery which is quite a ridiculous state of affairs but nevertheless, that’s where we are right now.

With exercise advice, it’s not such a big deal but that is not true with nutrition. The advice you get is a very big deal indeed. Who is right you may wonder?—My Pyramid, Aktins, Vegan diet, South Beach, The Zone, Pritikin, Mayo Clinic, Ornish, Harvard, the Mediterranean diet, Paleo, the Raw Food diet… the list is endless.

It’s even more frustrating if you’re trying to heal from disease. The hurdles to getting well are tough enough to leap, without having the enormous task of trying to figure out which diet is the one that will work.

You’d think by now that science would have answered the simple question—“What is a natural human diet?” but no, unfortunately they haven’t. Science isn’t even asking that question because who would fund it? But look at nature—cows eat grass, monkeys eat fruit, lions eat deer and koalas eat eucalyptus leaves. It’s all very simple. Why not so with us?

The truth is that we humans do have a natural diet determined by our evolution but that obvious fact is obscured by the confusion caused by coming at the problem from the wrong direction.

Science

Nutritional science is a still baby. “Science is what we do when we don’t know what we’re doing” as one scientist insightfully put it. And science by its nature tends to look at the nitty-gritty and often completely miss the big picture, the glaringly obvious.

In fact, much dietary advice is put together by drawing on what I consider to be questionable studies or conclusions. I question the usefulness for example of studying unhealthy people and drawing conclusions from that about what is healthy. It’s the wrong approach.

A better way would be to study healthy people—groups of humans who live to old age without the killer lifestyle diseases and then do what they do!

So I question science as the ultimate authority (for now) when it comes to healthy living, because the science approach has an inbuilt problem—complexity. The number of interacting factors is too big to map. But science will eventually proclaim the truth because the truth “will out.”

All over the world, when traditional diets are exchanged for westernized diets, the health of the people plummets and the usual diseases of civilization appear—cancer, heart disease, obesity, osteoporosis, diabetes, depression, stroke and so on.

We don’t need to map the incredible complexity of our bodies to figure out what to eat. The sane approach is to figure out what our genes expect and look to healthy people getting it right, living in nature. Such people still exist today.

Agendas

There are people out there who do nothing else all day than figure out how to get your attention and how to get you to part with your money.

Whilst the number of ethical business is growing, the vast majority still have no interest in your health and happiness. I wish this wasn’t something you needed to even think about but it is—because they use every psychological trick in the book to get you to believe you need their product.

Food, beauty, health, you name it… you just can’t be happy without them they’d have you believe. I question that too and I’d like you to question it.

Businesses fund science too. Universities need funding to conduct studies and businesses fund them to get evidence that their product is what you need. The whole system is largely driven by money. And the health industry, like most areas of human activity has its fair share of corruption and greed.

The beautiful truth is that you are a product of nature and you should look to nature to discover how to be healthy and happy. This powerful idea then gives you a solid framework in which to evaluate the claims of science, business and even government advice.

Wrong focus

When modern lifestyles squish our joy for life, it’s natural for us to look for answers. “It’s my job that’s making me unhappy, my partner, I have too much to do, I can’t relax. He must change. I need a new car, a new career, a new
house. I need to be appreciated, I need to be successful…” ad infinitum.

It’s not that any of these things don’t matter. Of course they do. But your life is primarily a reflection of your inner state.

To be happy, go after happiness directly!

It’s about the right focus and the right priorities. Change your inner state first, then, as if by magic, your outer life will fall in line with the new you.

So the rest of this report is about how to change your inner state—the important areas of focus that will truly bring health and happiness into your life.

Part 2 — The Causes of Happiness

Clarity

“I have a dream…” —one of the best known speeches ever. I also have a dream—I dream that our children will be taught the ways of health from an early age and live lives free of suffering, depression and disease. I dream that everyone can live with a permanent sense of energy, appreciation and joy for life.

It’s a simple and possible dream.

I know it’s possible because I’ve been at both ends of the health spectrum. I suffered daily physical, mental and emotional torture for thirteen years that I can only describe as hell. But by putting the conditions in place that allowed my body to heal, I started to laugh again, I started to feel my brain wake up, I started to have joy for life and extreme clarity of mind.

If it’s possible for me, it’s possible for everyone. That’s my dream. Too many people’s lives feel like a giant game of whack-a-mole, where they get over one problem then another pops up. We feel like we’re on an awful treadmill called life that makes us sad but we can’t get off and we don’t know what to do. It doesn’t have to be that way at all.

The situations that put humanity in this unhappy place are all clear to me but the important thing isn’t to know how it all happened. The important thing is to see the finish line with exceptional clarity—to know what to do to end the madness and even more importantly, how to get to the finish line from where you are now.

Two conditions

What are the conditions for happiness? They are energy and peace of mind.

We often describe a child as “delightful” which means “full of light.” The delightful child has high energy, no worries, no hang-ups and lives in the present moment—the conditions for happiness. High energy focused in the present moment is that quality of “light.”

This should be everyone’s natural state, but decades of not living well and too much stress eats into our vitality—the vitality and peace of mind that children naturally have.

But your body is very forgiving. It can heal and given the right conditions, go back to a state of health and vitality. And by giving ourselves a serious reality check, we can re-connect to the present, wake up and smell the roses, gain the peace of mind that bring spontaneity, laughter and joy.

Life is not about success, it’s about happiness! Our cultural conditioning has got us all confused! The goal is happiness; life overflowing with energy directed to the present moment.

So don’t waste one more second of precious life and go for happiness directly by increasing energy and peace of mind—the two conditions for happiness.

Knowing “what”

Modern life is a fluffy place where everyone wants our attention and we can so easily be distracted. If energy and peace of mind are the conditions you need, then that’s where you must place your attention and your efforts if you want to be happy.

So how do we increase these two things—energy and peace of mind?

First we need to know very precisely what we need to do consistently to keep us in line with what we naturally are, what our genes expect.

We have busy lives… too busy. So we need intense focus onto those things which give our bodies the right conditions for energy. Those conditions are defined by nature.

These conditions for health and energy aren’t too hard to figure out once you realize that nature is the guiding principle. They are the obvious ones—exercise, good natural food, sunlight, fresh air and so on. And some that are perhaps not so obvious that really help us to re-connect to the present moment—that joyful flow that children have.

You need to be exceptionally clear what you need to do every day to meet these conditions. It’s the every day part that matters. The conditions need to be there today, tomorrow, the next day, the next for the rest of your life.

The idea of doing all this for the rest of your life might seem to you right now like some horrible life sentence. But nothing could be further from the truth. The goal is joy, to always feel good. How could that ever be arduous in any way?

Knowing “how”

Ideally, we would have been born into a world like my dream—where the rules for happiness were understood by everyone already and we simply learned the wisdom from an early age.

Unfortunately for you and me, that’s not the world we inherited. It took me too many of my best years in suffering and more years looking for answers for the simple truth to dawn.

It’s not so easy for you and me because we need to undo all the misinformation and behaviors that take us away from joy and happiness.

All this undoing falls into the realm of how—how to change, how to finally end up with all the conditions for happiness in place every day for life.

Having the right mindset

This whole report is about the mindset of happiness—the absolutely crucial mental distinctions you need before you’ll ever want to, or be ready to take action.

But apart from the big ones like “nature” and the “two conditions for happiness,” there are a few other crucial mindset distinctions you need.

Perhaps these don’t have the same gravity as “nature” but they’re all important nevertheless:

EVERYTHING AFFECTS EVERYTHING ELSE

This is essentially the opposite of the pill for an ill mindset. The truth is that everything affects everything else. It’s easy to see how a few bad nights’ sleep can affect every interaction, relationship and decision. But these connections run very deep indeed. Whether or not you get cancer in twenty years depends on what’s on your fork today.

Everything affects every other thing.

That’s why we need a whole lifestyle, multi-pronged attack. It’s only when your whole lifestyle is right that you can experience the wonderful feelings of permanent energy and health.

CHECKING HEALTH BOXES IS YOUR NO.1. PRIORITY

Because we are now outside the controls of nature, we must consciously choose to check health boxes every day. All our instincts work in a natural environment. They don’t work at all well in modern life. For example, our fight or flight response kicks in at the most inappropriate times—like being stuck in traffic. Or we crave high-fat, high-sugar combination foods like pizza and ice-cream that make our taste buds wild with excitement. These types of food never existed until very recently.

So we need to be proactive and check those health boxes every day—the same health boxes that would be there naturally for our ancestors.

To have the joy for life a child has, checking health boxes has to become your
top priority. It’s so easy to get distracted with a million things to do but decide for yourself—what is really important?

THE IMPORTANCE OF IMPORTANCE

What you decide is important to you is very important. If you know and understand with incredible clarity that without checking health boxes every single day, you won’t be happy, then you make that important in your mind. You have the right attitude—“This comes first, it’s more important than any other thing,” because health and happiness is fundamental. It’s the foundational state of a good life.
No 1—make it no. 1.

The Happiness Secret

Ok, phew. You’ve been very patient and good—and not jumped to this point to see what the secret is. But here we are now—The Happiness Secret, the one underlying factor of happiness.

Ideally at this point there would be some razzamatazz. Some funky jazz playing, neon lights and dancing girls so imagine that ok? Happiness is built on a consistent lifestyle—the lifestyle your genes expect. The key word there is “consistent.”

Exercise is not the answer… daily exercise is the answer. Good food is not the answer… good food every day is the answer. No single factor is the answer except the secret. Happiness is about lots of things because everything affects everything else.

Now we have clear mental distinctions—a new mindset, we have a clear finish line and motivation to check health boxes every day.

So what’s the one factor that underlies all these things? What’s the one crucial factor you must harness? (Drum roll)…

The… secret… is… da… daaaah…

~~ HABIT ~~

OK, it’s not a glamorous word or concept but it’s our habits that drive our thoughts and actions day by day. We couldn’t walk, talk or tie our shoes without habits and the habit connections run very deep.

Good habits make the conditions for happiness effortless and that’s the key. It’s consistency. It’s doing all the good things consistently. And to do that you need habit power because habit is the power that effortlessly repeats learned behavior.

Habit doesn’t care whether that behavior is good or bad—it repeats anyway. So we get incredibly clear and we harness habit power—break bad habits and put new ones in place that create happiness and joy for life.

I’d like to leave you with a few of my favorite quotes to ponder about habits, the underlying secret of happiness:

“We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
— Aristotle

“Motivation is what gets you started,
habit is what keeps you going.”
— Jim Rohn

“Habit is the deepest law of human nature.”
— Thomas Carlyle

Habit it the deepest law! When we do something without thinking about it, we say it’s second nature.

This is a powerful truth to reflect upon. Once you know something, you start to see it everywhere. And now you know that it’s your habits that build health and happiness—that drive your actions, you’ll start to notice it too.

Just as we couldn’t re-learn to tie our shoe laces or re-learn to ride a bike every day, we need a good mental map and strong habits if we’re to live happy lives. Eating healthily, exercising and all the other good habits then become your default effortless behavior. Like riding a bike, it doesn’t need much of your conscious attention and so becomes easy.

We even use the phrase “like riding a bike” to say once learned, it’s easy and never forgotten. The guy who drinks ten strong coffees today does so because he did it yesterday. The girl who runs five miles today does so because she did it
yesterday.

Good or bad, your habits are the underlying causes behind your health and your happiness.

So now you know that habit power is what you need to get happy and healthy—because habit is the power that effortlessly repeats. But it’s not enough to know it, you need to use it. You need to put the power of habit to work in your life if you want extraordinary health and happiness.

I’ve written a guide that will empower you to do just that. It’s called…
Habit Guide: How to be Happy and Healthy. It will show you precisely what you need to do every day to put the causes of happiness effortlessly in place and crucially, HOW to do it, using your natural ability to create habits.

Enter your details below to receive Habit Guide for free, in the form of weekly emails, or download the eBook to see the whole system at once.

Thanks for sticking with me and The Happiness Secret through to the end. I wish you the very best of health, happiness and effortless joy for life!

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Mike Kinnaird
Habit Guide: How to be Happy & Healthy