Well Heath Ledger is dead – another young person gone in their prime. I must admit this loss hit me harder than your average death as Heath hailed from my home city of Perth, was also a father, and apparently battled depression.

Why is it that Heath Ledger and all these other celebrities we see going to rehab – Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, etc – are/ were seemingly so unhappy? They have the world at their fingertips, right? Well from my experience there is more to happiness then first meets the eye. The depression I mentioned at the start of the article is now long behind me, and I would like to share what I consider to be 4 key ingredients to a happy life that may help to explain all this unhappiness we see.

“Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.” – Henry David Thoreau

When do you consider your life “finished”? At what point can you hang up your hat and say that you truly have done everything you wanted in life, you are perfect in every way and that you have learned all you need to know? The answer for all of us is the same – never. None of us can ever say with absolutely certainty that we have truly arrived and there is nothing more for us to do. Just like life is a never ending journey, the goal of being all that we can be in life is also never ending. We all have work to do – be it in our personal lives, our careers or in our community. There are always areas we can work on improving, new ideas we can learn and new experiences we can have and share with others.