Can Happiness be watching a bird eating french fries ?
In this article, it is a pleasure diving into Venus Williams’ - a professional tennis player at age 45 (!?) who recently re-emerge from her surgery (or presumed retirement?) this last fall at the 2025 US Open, nothing short of amazing epitome inspirational - new book STRIVE for her formula for success, daily mission striving, and lifestyle with an unique mind body balance recipe to prevent burnout, so to keep striving!
This article will first present her formula briefly, then elaborate idu thoughts on it, and finally on how to Simplify with that magic one exercise that covers it all.
The book presented her Strive formula based on 8 factors(practiced daily or occassional) :
Here goes on a quick summary:
Observe - all elements, the details : things, people, nature etc
Appreciate - all small or big elements. being thankful
These 2 I think could be lumped under one theme - for the sake of Simplicity - entitled : Being loosed/ relaxed
Next comes:
Soothe - activities to reduce stress/ pressure : mind, body, spirit
Balance: avoiding excess on certain areas of life and balance it with other activities, avoid being lopsided, so to prevent tilt into heavy stress, bad habits or burnout. Balance is not the same thing as Soothe.
Enrich : could be knowledge based such as reading, watching educational videos or physical improvement such as body workout.
These 3 could be lumped as a group : Staying Balanced
Next comes:
Faith : activities to reaffirm your faith of your goals/ purpose daily, to remind.
Motivate: : daily acitivites to motivate and inspire yourself: reading or watching others or role models succeed etc.
Strive: reminding yourself to put in the effort and to preasure yourself to strive, to sail toward your goal every single day
These 3 i think could be lumped under : Strive
She stated that all the above 8 factors could be structured around:
your activities,
your environment/surrounding,
and people you deal with,
And you - mind, body, spirit
If we could center our daily life to as many of the 8 factors, the formula could become routine, with that optimal balance achieved to forever strive, avoiding burnout.
In idu summary and idu words, the 8 factors can be Simplified into 3 themes:
Being loosed / relaxed
Staying balanced
Strive
These 3 themes are centered on you, your activites, with who and where.
It is quite an ambitious book - it looks fairly simple and straight forward with its outline of variables for that delicate balance for success, but to apply all the above, is quite a forbidable task for an average individual on a daily basis. No one have time or emergy to cover all 8 factors on a daily basis. So how to solve this puzzle?
Thus this article. To embark on this complicated adventure of Simplifying it.
The key to simplication is to find that one activity or exercise that you do daily (or frequent enough)that covers all 3 themes (8 factors) or as many factors as possible. In Venus Wiliams’ world, that activity is tennis - she did not mention that important fact somehow.
So what is your ONE daily activity ?
Idu research reveals a list of activities or careers or hobbies below that covers all 8 factors:
Explore
Gardening
Teaching
Spiritual or religious field work
Any Sports - professional level training
Venus Williams’ book is important as it shows us, amid the ocean of success books and recipes, what optimal balance is so to prevent burnout. Her module complements idu modules of “35 blurbs of Happiness” and “15 traits of Success” as balance to prevent burnout is critical to forever strive toward success (and beyond) and happiness.
Reiterating the foundation concepts of idu Happiness module (35 blurbs) here - idu has 3 modules, the other two are idu Success module (15 traits of auccess) and the Good Morals module (9 traits) -
Happiness is :
When work = purpose = passion
And
Using your talent to help others or share your talent with others
It is so easy to practice some success formula and forever strive hard without paying attention to that optimal daily balance.
That balance is important.
Burnout is costly.
Venus Williams’ 8 factors create that unique balance that could be practiced easily through your chosen one activity or exercise.
So what is your daily one activity ?
