TL;DR
Happiness is simply the absence of desire.
Happiness is critical for wellness, and we’re morally responsible for it.
Happiness is a choice, largely driven by what we focus on.
What is happiness?
Happiness as defined by most people is simply the absence of desire:
The simplest answer to happiness is to set low standards:
- Remember that life is transient, and that everything is temporary.
Psychologists have identified three Happy Lives that can typically fulfill our desires:
- The “Pleasant Life” creates as much positive emotion as possible.
- The “Good Life” is an constant engaged flow of worthwhile new life experiences.
- The “Meaningful Life” uses your natural strengths to serve a purpose larger than yourself.
Happiness is always about finding satisfaction, and is the only way to maintain long-term success.
- While it’s possible to succeed without happiness, happiness is the only way to reap its rewards.
Even when we don’t strive for satisfaction in life, we still want it.
- Avoiding pain or bad consequences is trying to reduce unhappiness.
Happiness has hidden benefits
Satisfied people have an easier life:
- Hardship is more bearable.
- The immune system is stronger.
- Satisfied people have more energy and finish tasks quicker, meaning more time.
- Positive thinking make learning easier.
- Without bad feelings, creativity is easier.
- Self-control is easier because happy people run “to” instead of “from” things.
- Friendships are better:
- More people want to be friends with an enthusiastic person, but less with an unhappy one.
- More things have more meaning while happy.
Happiness also avoids the long-term consequences of misery:
- Negativity causes the brain to deteriorate:
- Fears reinforce themselves:
- Fear of vulnerability or failing
- Aversion to all risks
- Afraid to self-express
- Feelings become harder to manage:
- Unable or unwilling to identify feelings
- Feeling inferior or inadequate
- Forced into constant fight/flight/freeze reactions
- Low self-esteem builds self-rejection
- Disconnection from reality:
- Oblivious to self
- Tendency to set unrealistic, unattainable, idealized expectations
- Anxious about all consequences
- Exaggerating real and imagined threats
- Fears reinforce themselves:
- Unhappiness causes physiological problems:
- The immune system doesn’t effectively fight diseases.
- Wounds and injuries heal slower.
- Unhappy people also tend to live hypocritically:
- Defining self-worth by others’ opinions
- Distrusting others
- Not forgiving self and others
- Withdrawn and isolated to avoid rejection
- Feeling misunderstood and presuming others are evil
Happiness isn’t a circumstance
Pleasant things by themselves don’t connect to inner happiness:
- Enjoyable things without the right time and place can create long-term disasters.
- Everything enjoyable also comes with responsibilities.
- Some things are never worth the investment if your goal is to be happy:
- A nice home, which can be satisfying, but won’t create fulfillment, and can be a risky endeavor.
- Possessions may give a rush while acquiring, but the excitement fades quickly.
- Career success comes with many happiness-suppressing responsibilities and sacrifices.
- Sexual pleasure and physical intimacy gives the most intense human experience without many adverse consequences, but it fades quickly and diminishes in intensity with age.
- Romantic relationships and friendships give connection and meaning, but people have to tend to other matters and will leave you alone part of the day.
- Safety provides comfort, but never purpose or satisfaction.
- Success may provoke happiness, but never guarantees it.
- Any other enjoyable experience or series of experiences (concert, movie, game, song or anything else) fades.
- Further, anything that does give satisfaction will provide diminishing return the more you do it.
Each person is solely responsible for their own happiness, and nobody else can change it:
- Our personality defines quite a bit of how happy we generally are, but we get to choose how we process the information we receive.
We can’t change our feelings, but have control over our responses:
- We can control how we express our feelings.
- We can control our attitude about what happens to us.
- We can decide the patterns of our lives that our experiences fit into.
- While we can be influenced, we each choose how much we want to be influenced.
We tend to repeat statements that circumvent responsibility for our happiness:
- “I just can’t…”
- “(thing) is holding me back.”
- “If I get (thing) then everything will be okay.”
- “I have no other choice.”
- “(person or situation) won’t let me.”
Our physical reactions give context for our feelings, so how we express feelings gives us context to process them.
Happiness is a moral duty
You aren’t simply your own possession:
- Even if you don’t see it, there are some people in your life who love you.
- In whatever way you interpret it, God made you.
- And, even if you’re an atheist with no friends or family, you’re a highly sophisticated, ordered living being that has at least some potential use in the unknown future.
A bad day is perfectly acceptable, but prolonged misery drains others’ wellness:
- Miserable people destroy the happiness of those they’re around.
- Beyond destroying lives, misery can erode entire communities.
Happiness requires the right focus
The ability to change how we see the future and past is a sign of mental wellness:
- The past is a pile of incomplete memories, and the future is simply our imagination.
- Thus, we can’t harm anything by bending how we see the future or past to our desires.
- When we rewrite our past, it gives us greater control over how we see the future.
Only focus on true, good, and beautiful things:
- True things, like principles and values
- Good things, like friendship or love
- Beautiful things, like a sunrise or art
Avoid or ignore discouraging and irrelevant things:
- Desires you can’t presently accomplish
- Status or accomplishments compared to others
- How things were better in the past
- How things could or will become better in the future (which isn’t guaranteed)
- What you don’t have or haven’t attained
- Unknown risks that could hurt you, your future plans, or those you love
Learn self-acceptance:
- Completely accept and love yourself without any conditions for what you think, do, believe or want.
- Plainly express who you really are to yourself, with no preset limits or expectations.
- Separate what you do from who you are, and accept yourself even when your actions aren’t acceptable.
Contrary to popular belief, happy people do not ignore bad things:
- Ignoring bad parts of reality only works temporarily.
- The happiest people tend to say “things could be worse” or “I am okay” instead of “everything is good”.
Unhappiness starts with stress
All misery comes from prolonged stress over something:
- Stress and happiness only exist in our minds.
- Depression is past-tense stress mixed with hopelessness.
Unlike stress, stressors exist in the world around us:
- Most stressors are outside our direct control.
- Stresors create stress only when:
- We feel we must take action
- We fear losing something
Not all stress is bad:
- Eustress keeps us active and happy (e.g., stress from an alarm clock).
- Lowers the risk of many fatal diseases
- Increases social skills and general sociability
- Makes learning and focus easier
- Increases awareness of our instincts
- Distress, by contrast, inspires fear and uncertainty:
- Causes waste in resources, time, and energy
- Linked to many ailments such as heart attack and stroke
- Any action driven by distress usually ends in mental illness
Find your stressors
Resolving distress requires understanding your stressors:
- Meditate on your thoughts to find overwhelming feelings.
- Try to track the feelings as they occur.
- Recognize the line between what you can and can’t control.
- Focus on the facts behind your feelings.
- Release anything uncontrollable and focus on managing what you can change.
While finding stress simply requires meditation, changing it takes more work.