Alice Inoue is a best-selling author and authority on life advice who has devoted her life to assisting others in overcoming obstacles. Over the past 20+ years, thousands of people have found clarity via her work as one of Hawaii’s thought leaders and respected expert. Her eight books on happiness and self-improvement, as well as her long-running column in MidWeek, Hawaii’s biggest weekly with 200k subscribers, are filled with her own brand of life lessons. I’ll highlight a few of the interview’s really insightful points here.
Happiness Is Not the Goal of Life.
Contrary to popular belief, happiness is not the ultimate goal of life. If happiness is the goal of life, then when bad things happen to us, we will feel as though our lives have no meaning at all. In truth, we will all experience difficult times and experience sadness and frustration frequently.
Life is good when I accept everything—the good and the bad, the positive and the negative—as part of the total. And if I’m able to accept that and learn from it, I’ll feel satisfied and content. [Alice Inoue]
Finding out more about who you are and what you’re capable of is all part of the purpose of life.
The first stage is accepting where you are, whether you are confronting a significant challenge or failure. Once you’ve mastered accepting your circumstances, you realise that you must take action to overcome them. This is how you develop and improve as a person. The goal of life is to continually learn and develop.
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
Where You Find Your Purpose Is Where You Find Happiness
What makes us feel good is happiness, which could be the result of anything worthwhile or useful.
For instance, you might feel good if you assisted someone in opening a door that they were unable to do and they expressed their gratitude to you; you would also feel good after completing a task.
What makes you feel good? How do you know? Alice advises pondering the following two questions:
Where am I a daily teacher?
Where do I obtain my daily education?
Think about your daily activities:
Are you someone’s father figure or mother figure? Are you a connection for some people, for example, recommending a person, a company, or a service based on a positive experience? Do you offer some folks assistance or a nurturing environment?
These straightforward inquiries assist you in realising your significance in 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
Knowing Nothing About Life Actually Aids in Clarity
We can never be completely certain of everything in life, even what will happen in the future. What we must do is acknowledge that life is complicated and that nothing is ever entirely clear. In order to get better clarity, we should concentrate on the one thing we can do right now. In fact, what is confusing today may help us become clearer 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.
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
Clarity doesn’t come instantly, and it doesn’t manifest with just one uplifting idea. It takes time and dedication to make this kind of mental change.
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 need to start figuring out where our beliefs are mistaken and where we are looking in the wrong places. We can progressively achieve clarity in this way. To move forward, we must first ascertain where we are.
Final Reflections
This interview with Alice will provide you insights to achieve clarity in life, helping you start to determine how to work towards the life and objectives you want to have, if you’re feeling lost and overwhelmed in life.
It’s not simple to find contentment and a sense of purpose in life. However, you have a lifetime to learn and develop so that you can get better every day!
