Are you happy?

I mean, are you really happy?

Not happy with your current car, relationship, job, house, or wardrobe. Are you happy with your life?

Tough to answer, right? Not least because how in the heck can you know for sure one way or the other? After all, isn’t happiness subjective? Isn’t it ever-changing? Doesn’t it depend on external factors over which you have little or no control?

You could be forgiven for thinking that happiness—real happiness—is, indeed, subjective and down to external factors, because the media peddles that message with incessant vigour. Even an article in Psychology Today puts true happiness down to external factors, stating “[to be truly happy] all we have to do is focus on the things that we have and not focus on what we don’t have”.

But while you could be forgiven for thinking that happiness is subjective and down to external factors, you’d be wrong.

You can be thoroughly discontent with your car, house, sound system, wardrobe, job, relationship, or whatever, and still be truly happy. That’s because real happiness has zero to do with external factors—its source is 100% internal.

But you only tap into that source—you only catch a glimpse of real happiness—when you connect with, and step into, the real you.

And therein lies the problem.

The real you knows what true happiness looks like for you. The real you understands your passions, your values, the cry of your soul. The real you knows what makes you tick. And, if the voice of the real you was all you had to listen to, then no problem.

But it isn’t, so big problem. Because the voice of the real you is just one voice among many, and those many voices are loud and persistent.

They are the voices that scream out of billboards and TV commercials, magazines and websites, each telling you what a great life looks like. They are the voices of family that tell you the career, partner, or degree that will give you deep and lasting happiness. The voices of friends who tell you that a particular holiday, hairstyle, physique, or social event will be the thing that scratches that itch.

And so you buy that car, move to that location, style your hair that way, pursue that career, marry that person, each with the promise of real happiness attached.

But, somehow, that happiness that you feel in the moment doesn’t last. It fades. That itch comes back. That sense of discontent resurfaces. That feeling that something—something you can’t quite put your finger on—is missing pokes and prods you.

And that something is missing because the only voice that truly knows where real happiness is to be found for you—the voice of the real you—has been silenced by the cacophony of the world around you.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

When you learn to pick out the voice of the real you from all the noise around it, and to tune your senses to its whispers, everything changes.

The first step to finding that voice is to discover your values: the things that sit at the core of what makes you, you. The things that truly matter to you. The things you will fight for, maybe even die for.

Your values are revealed through the things you love now, and loved in years gone by, and that you like, tolerate, and despise, both now and in the past. The themes that lie within what truly matters to you paint a picture of who you truly are. The real you.

So, what do you love? What do you like, tolerate and despise? And what values do those things reveal about who you truly are?