A researcher on how to live a happy life

For me, I have become happier in the moment via insight meditation, which focuses on noticing thoughts and feelings without action or reaction.<p>Part of the wisdom of meditation lies in the following: There is baggage we all carry, the self, this belief we&#x27;re the center of it all, the author of (and subservient to) our own thoughts. How do I stop doing what makes me unhappy, if that&#x27;s &quot;who I am&quot;? But, in reality, I can abandon &quot;who I am&quot; and find new processes of living and new ways of thinking about the world.<p>In practice, this resetting of your mind is achieved without training by various psychdelic drugs, which peel back the layers of the onion in an effortless fashion. In meditation, you train your mind to actually pay close attention, eventually achieving an effortless open-ness that drugs achieve very simply. Once you&#x27;re good at following your breath, you can turn to thoughts and feelings, recognizing them as mere arisings in consciousness.<p>Mere arisings in the mind do not require response: there&#x27;s no need to act upon our desires, urges, distraction, and regular patterns, they are just heuristics or mental shortcuts the brain uses over and over to save time&#x2F;effort of decision making. Do we have to respond to all our noticing sounds, light, smells? If not, why do we have to respond to negative thoughts?<p>Negative thoughts may become crystallized into negative actions. However, if you know what behaviors of your own contribute to unhappiness, you can always pause for 10-15 seconds, meditate briefly, drawing upon your training of the brain&#x27;s meditative ability, and you will notice the actual feeling of the urge to behave, and not act upon it. It will disappear like very other appearance in consciousness.

Some overlap with Stoicism here. From the Enchiridion of Epictetus:<p>1. Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.<p>The things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered; but those not in our control are weak, slavish, restrained, belonging to others. Remember, then, that if you suppose that things which are slavish by nature are also free, and that what belongs to others is your own, then you will be hindered. You will lament, you will be disturbed, and you will find fault both with gods and men. But if you suppose that only to be your own which is your own, and what belongs to others such as it really is, then no one will ever compel you or restrain you. Further, you will find fault with no one or accuse no one. You will do nothing against your will. No one will hurt you, you will have no enemies, and you not be harmed.

I have long regarded happiness in the same category as grace: it is an undeserved and unasked for free gift. An epiphenomena that is not a consequence of, but happens along with, other positive actions.<p>And for me that&#x27;s living a less self-centered life.<p>I am happy when what I do with my life enriches the lives of others. But being transactional about this ruins the game. It is, among other things, the opposite of zero-sum. Do the thing for the exuberant joy of the thing itself, don&#x27;t take yourself too seriously or try to carry too much weight, and <i>act in the trust that</i>, but do not <i>demand as payment that</i> this will lead to a happier place.

There&#x27;s a bit of a trap here that I find myself standing in.<p>Parts of our culture are participatory. You get social benefits from going through the same things as your peers. When you stop getting sucked into things by your insecurities, you become non-participatory. You miss out on chances to connect with other people. There is no bonding experience for you, but there is for everybody else. It can be kind of alienating.<p>Imagine you are watching a new movie with people. 15 minutes in your think, &quot;Hey, this is a retelling of a story by [Shakespeare,Brontë]&quot;, or &quot;Oh geeze, the nerdy guy is the killer and everyone has dismissed him despite the foreshadowing.&quot; You now know the story arc, and so the roller coaster ends for you (unless the director is exceptional - Ron Howard, Apollo 13). Everyone else is having a great time. You&#x27;re still having a good time, but you&#x27;re paying more attention to the production values or the emotional range of one of the actors. You aren&#x27;t part of the same experience, and you are gonna have a tough time participating in the conversation. Whatever you do, don&#x27;t tell them you knew what was going to happen all along, Mr Buzzkill.<p>There are plenty of idealogs who would insist this isn&#x27;t a problem. Your need to belong is just another hang-up you need to deal with. That you should let go of that too. But I don&#x27;t think many of those idealogs ended their lives forgotten and alone because they never built a connection (or inter-generational connection in particular) with other people.

If you live in a very aggressive and malevolent environment that constantly wants to break you and use you for its own needs it&#x27;s important to follow these rules:<p>1. Don&#x27;t forget to love. There is always something to love. This is the most important thing. Enemies will try to make you hate (no matter what).<p>2. Be happy. It may sound as a trivial advice, but to be actually happy it&#x27;s very helpful to consciously set your inner state as &quot;happy&quot;. Despite all negative aspects of the situation you are in.<p>3. Be grateful. This is also helps a lot. There is always something more to lose. Be grateful for what you have now.<p>4. Dream! Dreams are the force that move us in our life. And the movement is necessary.<p>5. Live! Another trivial advice. But you can easily stuck under the burden without noticing it.<p>6. Try to fly over the problems, don&#x27;t let them control your mind and thoughts. Think of them as walls (well, sometimes you have to break through).<p>7. Try to use long-term planning. Uncertainty is not a good thing for happiness.<p>8. Don&#x27;t get sucked and destroyed by the temporary situation. There is always sunrise after darkness. Remember it.

<i>So if you ask people if they’d be happier living in California or the Midwest, most people say California. Actually the regions have comparable life satisfaction, but people say California because they think of the weather and fail to take account of other things, such as the fact that California is full of tedious hippies.</i><p>The author does not cite research about about how &quot;tedious hippies&quot; make people sad, nor demographic evidence that California is &quot;full of&quot; them.

I can confidently say that I am happy. Everybody close to me thinks that I was born happy and positive but they couldn&#x27;t be more wrong. Achieving a permanent state of happiness took years of active mental exercises. Since I don&#x27;t have any credible psychology background, nobody listens to my suggestions in real life. I doubt anybody would take me seriously here as well, but... all I have is time so this will help someone find their own path to happiness.<p>The first exercise I did in my pursuit of happiness was to understand what it means to be a happy person.<p>1. (At night) Would a happy person reach for the bottle of scotch? Why would he?<p>2. Knowing what I know about animal farming, would a happy person enjoy eating meat as much as currently am?<p>3. Would a happy person be as frustrated as I am with an under performing co-worker?<p>Once I had an idea of what a happy &#x27;me&#x27; would do, I started going down a journey of self reflection. Why am I doing the things a happy me wouldn&#x27;t do?<p>The whole journey helps me gain a higher resolution into my feelings and once my mind and my feelings are aligned, the negative feelings went away. My ability to empathize (initially I did not even know what that was) was no longer suppressed. Nowadays, negative feelings are rare, but every negative feeling and pain I feel is an opportunity to align my feelings and my logic.<p>I believe this: You will never be happy following someone&#x27;s else&#x27;s happy path.<p>You will be happy once you find the courage to confront your demons, reflect, and understand yourself better. Our minds does good job at hiding you from finding these demons, so a big part of the journey is finding and identifying them.

I found it strange that there was not one mention of the ancient Stoics, who, disregarding their non-materialist viewpoints, came up with much of this philosophy. I&#x27;d argue they are a more accurate original source of these viewpoints on mindfulness and contentment than the Epicureans.

I don&#x27;t agree with his analysis of modern happiness levels. It&#x27;s yet another biased quantitative analysis of various metrics that are decoupled from human nature. Struggles, efforts, shorter lifespan is not a problem if your days are filled with deeper emotions, less confusion, better balance timewise (slower pace but more efficient labour).<p>A tiny instance to try to explain my above abstract: in 2020 you can have a lot of tech, a cute office but still asked to archive a whole room on your own. In other cultures this would have been organized differently in pair for instance (you can see videos of people in asia building houses by juggling bricks between another). This turns a 10h dreadful and lonely chore into a 3h shared, almost pleasant, choreography. I believe how era is filled with false modernity which are mostly absurd lack of good sense around human needs for flow, teaming, etc<p>ps: critic aside, I find it lovely to see that people are &quot;researching&quot; happiness, which is probably more important to 100% of the population than a lot of &quot;matieral&quot; research being done right now

Another perhaps more esoteric approach is pointed to by Ramana Maharshi (and others) who encouraged people seeking happiness to inquire into &quot;the one who is unhappy&quot;. In other words, to ask oneself, &quot;Who is it that is unhappy?&quot; The idea being that the independent entity that most of us take ourselves to be is just a fictional story (an I-thought) with no real existence, and that it comes about from an erroneous identification with thoughts. Once that is fully realized, the problem of happiness is permanently solved because the &quot;I-thought&quot;, as he calls it, is the real root of the problem. In fact, according to him, it&#x27;s the root of all of our problems. ;-)

As a very happy person, perhaps I can give some advice :)<p>One thing that&#x27;s surprisingly powerful is changing your perspective or telling yourself that you&#x27;re happy. Similar to faking confidence, in a way: it starts fake but eventually you&#x27;ll be actually confident, and you won&#x27;t need to fake anything. Maybe the word &quot;fake&quot; isn&#x27;t the right one here; I think a good analogy is starting an engine - the first few turns of the engine are artificial but what follows is quite real. As the article says, most of our happiness level comes from our mind, and you control your mind. Thinking something makes it true in many cases: research has shown that people get convincingly drunk or high just from thinking they are (being given a placebo.)<p>&quot;Do more of what you like&quot; is decent advice too, but it doesn&#x27;t always align with happiness. I like swimming, eating pizza, and going to thrift stores. But I&#x27;ve tried, and doing more of those things didn&#x27;t make me happier. I like biking, traveling, and photography - doing more of those did make me happier! And I don&#x27;t like putting my phone away for a week, or doing chores that I put off, but those things do make me happier. My advice would be to experiment, and take notes.<p>Changing my lifestyle completely has also been good for me. It gives me time to look back and see what I really thought about a three hour commute or an unusual diet or unlimited data. Even things as mundane as new socks or a better phone case have made a difference for me. And there are some surprisingly big things I don&#x27;t care about at all.<p>I think trying to improve your happiness in ways like these is generally good for you, though I&#x27;d caution against making it into an obsession. Pretty much everyone I&#x27;ve seen that&#x27;s obsessed with a quest for happiness didn&#x27;t seem very happy. I think there&#x27;s another piece of the puzzle - being able to just be content - and for some that may be the hardest part of all.

&gt; Almost no one thinks about actively retraining the way they think. In fact, I don’t think this last idea even crosses most of our minds.<p>Really? I&#x27;m pretty sure there are thousands of years of philosophical and religious traditions that teach something along the lines of &quot;looking for happiness in the external world is a bad idea, instead try working on yourself&quot;.<p>I mean the four noble truths of Buddhism, a religion with roughly 0.5 billion followers, are (paraphrased):<p>1. There is suffering<p>2. That suffering is caused by attachment to worldly things<p>3. The way to get rid of that suffering is to work on not being attached to those things<p>4. The best way to work on not being attached to those things is, surprise surprise, Buddhism.<p>But this idea seems pretty prevalent in pop-psychology as well. So I&#x27;m not sure who the we in &quot;our minds&quot; is, but I think even most instagram celebrates of realized that maybe &quot;self work&quot; is a good idea.<p>Unfortunately there are some philosophers that, in the last 300 years, have started to question whether there is such a clear divide between the external and internal world... but I don&#x27;t expect most people to spend their time reading a lot of philosophy.

Happiness comes when you realize that&#x27;s impossible to be happy all the time and that&#x27;s fine.

Once was depressed in university so wrote this on happiness. Helps me to look back on. One &#x27;good&#x27; thing about depression is it gives you a reference point of how bad it can get.<p>Sadly what solved the depression for me was an external event (getting out of uni and getting a job).<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz&#x2F;life&#x2F;happiness" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz&#x2F;life&#x2F;happiness</a>

My happiness comes from making others happy, and surrounding myself with similarly minded people, and removing malignant people, places and situations from my life.<p>There isn&#x27;t enough time to waste it on shitty people or environments, and making active choices towards that end has improved my quality of life even when going through difficult times emotionally, physically and financially.

&gt;Almost no one thinks about actively retraining the way they think. In fact, I don’t think this last one even crosses most of our minds.<p>&quot;Retraining the way we think&quot; has come up in (almost) every homily I&#x27;ve heard in Catholic masses. Many of us, besides thinking about it whenever we happen to think about it, make sure we do this every week (if not more).

Long commutes are indeed the bane of my existence. One can never feel more helpless and outraged while stuck in heavy traffic.<p>Ironically, this pandemic has made me much happier as I don&#x27;t have to drive everywhere. I finally have more time to think and pursue my curiosities instead of burning gas and yelling expletives. It&#x27;s quite refreshing.

Over the many, many years, I have thrashed around with ... well, almost every suggestion that usually comes up on these articles and threads responding to these articles, as well as many unorthodox ideas. The pills and the preaching, the assorted practices recommended and the acting, going through the motions of joy hoping something will catch, the focuses outside oneself cast like grappling hooks onto any ship not sinking, the licensed and the masters&#x27; teachings, these have all disappointed me in the end. After failure upon failure, I have come to the conclusion that for some, the needle is not moved much at all upward, despite struggles and inventiveness, and so I have sided with Blake: some are born to endless night.

And perhaps that&#x27;s entirely the wrong thing to be optimized. Google &quot;happiness vs satisfaction&quot;. Happiness is a short term emotion, satisfaction is a long term one.<p>A good example is having kids; kids decreases happiness but increases satisfaction.

My thinking on this is that unhappiness is broadly classified as &quot;what will happen&quot; (WWH). What will happen if I can&#x27;t pay rent, what will happen to my kids if I die, what will happen if I can&#x27;t make the deadlines and so on. Its a thousand of these that we deal with every second - some are trivial for us and we can manage them. Some are significant for us and they cause unhappiness. Some are recurring, some are one-time (but can have large impact). I don&#x27;t have a solution - just speaking from personal feelings about this.

Has anyone participated in the testing of the mobile app mentioned at around the 75% mark of the article? One reference they have on the landing page is describing the Experience-Sampling Method [1] - there seem to be a few existing applications that allow one to track how exactly they felt in a quantified manner at a point in time.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Experience_sampling_method" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Experience_sampling_method</a>

I&#x27;ve realised the simple things: good diet, restful sleep, ample sunlight, a little exercise, and nourishing friends make a TON of difference, more than any of the things listed.

The article seems to touch upon Acceptance and Commitment Therapy [1] without explicitly calling it out. It is based on mindfulness and accepting things as they are. I personally have found it very effective.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.psychologytoday.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;therapy-types&#x2F;acceptance-and-commitment-therapy" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.psychologytoday.com&#x2F;us&#x2F;therapy-types&#x2F;acceptance-...</a>

For me currently happiness is just the balance between feeding my &quot;lizard brain&quot; (instincts, cravings, laziness) and my rational brain (being productive, working, planning for the future). Whenever I go one way too far, I start feeling either depressed (procrastinating too much) or exhausted&#x2F;burned out (working too much).

Very relevant on this topic, I loved Daniel Gilbert&#x27;s book, Stumbling on Happiness.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;56627.Stumbling_on_Happiness" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;56627.Stumbling_on_Happi...</a>

I can&#x27;t read the article right now but love this take from Joscha Bach on Lex Fridman&#x27;s podcast - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=8mixT5_U0hk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=8mixT5_U0hk</a>

I have concerns about following advice people write about how to be happy. Why are they doing it? Is it because they are happy, and they want to spread it? If so, is it like a rich person writing on how to become rich? Maybe they tell you X,Y,Z that they think were important in becoming rich, but it was actually A,B,C that they were blind to.<p>The worse alternative is if it is someone who was unhappy, and then did something to get happy, and now they want to share that thing. Maybe it is just a stop gap measure? I see this as examples in, say, youth pastors who are preaching the word, and then commit suicide and it turns out they were struggling with far more than they ever let on.

&gt; <i>Almost no one thinks about actively retraining the way they think. In fact, I don’t think this last one even crosses most of our minds.</i><p>This is so, <i>so</i> false that it makes the rest of the article hard to take seriously.<p>A <i>ton</i> of people thought about these things. Some thousands of years ago, and wrote quite interesting books about it (like a good amount of Buddhist treatises but definitely not only).<p>A lot of modern people think of that too, problem is that junk food &#x2F; bad workplaces &#x2F; tensions in the family &#x2F; lack of good sleep etc. all change your brain chemistry so that it&#x27;s very hard for you to look for the problems inward and try and start a change from within.<p>I don&#x27;t have proof for this; but I&#x27;ve spoken with therapists and psychologists and they often admit that the pills that some patients want to take literally change the brain chemistry. And dietitians and personal gym trainers tell me that the right food and the right workout routine change your body&#x27;s composition, hence the brain&#x27;s as well.<p>So an article that starts with such a sensationalistic and untrue premise is kind of dubious.<p>A lot of people think about what the author says they don&#x27;t. But many don&#x27;t know where to begin for most (or all) of their lives. That&#x27;s a modern tragedy we all have to fix: to educate people on mental health, how to avoid the worst kinds of stress, how to deescalate properly, how to give the benefit of the doubt, how to eat what&#x27;s good for you and avoid the rest, how and what to workout, and many many others.

Must watch Experiments on Happiness - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=_EnPHxXKtpk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=_EnPHxXKtpk</a>

And yet there are whole industries devoted to making us unhappy in the hope that we will then consume more of their product. The beauty industry wants to make us unhappy with our appearance. The self-help industry, wants to make us unhappy with our lives in general. Social media wants us to be outraged and thus more engaged. Advertising in general is built around keeping us from being happy so we will buy more stuff.<p>We should be aware of that and be very careful about the media we consume.

The article is nothing new and just the standard &quot;happiness comes from within&quot; tropes. Whether you believe that or not, this is a very standard view on the subject.

For me the secret to happiness is to produce things. Or said another way: be productive. Make something. If you have a job where you make things you are good to go. Homes, cars, ships (in my case in my youth). If you sit at a desk all day processioning forms or work in a call center, find something to produce in your off hours, often called a hobby, but it could be a side gig. Write some code, write a book, paint a mural, whatever.

One approach I consistently found to work well is to remove things that don&#x27;t make me happy. It has a bigger longer term effect than doing|buying more.

How to be sad? Convince yourself that your fundamental human needs are not okay, that they only affect you because you are not strong or virtuous enough.

My own thoughts on this, not really a contradiction of the article: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.barrkel.com&#x2F;2005&#x2F;10&#x2F;how-to-be-happy.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.barrkel.com&#x2F;2005&#x2F;10&#x2F;how-to-be-happy.html</a><p>The point about writing down to help memory is good. Though I wonder if forgetfulness of bad times isn&#x27;t part of hedonic adaptation.

For me the happiest moment is when I&#x27;m able to fully utilize my ability to solve a difficult technical problem.

&gt; Actually the regions have comparable life satisfaction, but people say California because they think of the weather and fail to take account of other things, such as the fact that California is full of tedious hippies.<p>Didn&#x27;t read past this. There&#x27;s a way to get your point across &amp; this is not it.

Happiness is overrated; find something you like doing and do it. A job, a hobby, a pursuit--in short, an avocation.<p>The greatest horror for me would be to not be interested in anything. So many people seem to have this affliction. That is what I would call unhappiness: to be interested in nothing in particular.

I&#x27;ll settle for being content...

Personally, what&#x27;s helped me is watching Rick &amp; Morty, and it finally hitting home that none of our lives mean anything in the grandest scheme of things, if there is such a thing. So we are free to live as we want. Nobody can judge us except ourselves.

There is an amazing course on happiness from Yale: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.coursera.org&#x2F;learn&#x2F;the-science-of-well-being" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.coursera.org&#x2F;learn&#x2F;the-science-of-well-being</a>

I often inquire &#x27;why is happiness the thing we choose to focus on&#x27;

happiness should not be a goal. the way evolution has wired us, we will work for a long time to achieve something that we think is going to make us happy only to move to the next thing after only experiencing a glimpse of happiness.<p>you have a choice to mindlessly chase what you think is going to make you happy or simply enjoying your current life situation by totally accepting it. you don’t need anything besides basic things to make you happy. happy is your natural state and we inflict pain and suffering upon us continually. stop doing it - break the cycle.

All other things being equal, happiness is 100% chemical.<p>Either you&#x27;re naturally happy, or you&#x27;re not. Additional chemicals (natural or artificial) can help adjust the dopamine, seratonin and norepinephrine levels that we sense as pleasure for a short time, but that&#x27;s not happiness.<p>You can be an unhappy rich person, a poor happy one. You can be a happy paraplegic, or an unhappy Olympic level athlete. You can be happy while in prison, or unhappy while free. You can be happy in chronic pain and happy under intense stress. Or the opposite. Hell could be lonliness, or hell could be other people. It&#x27;s 100% individual.<p>Accepting your natural state resets the bar, and lets you live peacefully. Everything else is just trying to be something you&#x27;re not.

&gt; Almost no one thinks about actively retraining the way they think.<p>A very western perspective. Vipassana meditation practices are essentially doing that, and I am sure lots of meditation types as well.

happiness is a vague concept<p>as long as you&#x27;re not depressed, you&#x27;re fine

&gt; &#x27;If you look at what people actually do to be happier, it seems nearly everyone tries to change the external facts: we try to become richer, thinner, more successful, to find a better house in a nicer area, and so on. A few of us think about trying to spend less time working, and more time on hobbies or with friends and family. Almost no one thinks about actively retraining the way they think. In fact, I don’t think this last idea even crosses most of our minds.&#x27;<p>You might be new to this because you&#x27;ve just started your PhD, but that doesn&#x27;t mean everyone else is too.

To me happiness always comes out from hard challenges. Pushing myself to achieve something that I thought was previously impossible

I think the material conditions of one’s existence are relevant to happiness. A lot of articles like this, minimalism, tiny houses and living with nothing strike me as boomer media controlled justifications for austerity. Gas lighting a whole generation of people to settle for less because “things” don’t matter, money doesn’t matter and what really matters is living in a tire shed telling yourself that everything is OK.<p>Also:<p>&gt; Actually the regions have comparable life satisfaction, but people say California because they think of the weather and fail to take account of other things, such as the fact that California is full of tedious hippies.<p>I can’t eyeroll this enough

Entire books and philosophies talk about &quot;retraining the way you think&quot;. Not sure, if the author was hiding under a rock, dropped some acid and came with this earth-shattering realization. But ahem, he supposedly has a PHD, so he can get away with it. Most happy people are happy because they have gratitude for the daily things, they don&#x27;t let negative emotions pull them down and just look at the world with a &quot;glass half-full&quot; view.

“Virtue is facing the fact of what <i>is</i> and the facing of the fact is a state of bliss.” - J. Krishnamurti

I suggest having purpose. Have responsibility, as many find meaning in that.<p>Good sex helps.<p>Why does being happy have to be complicated? :)

I&#x27;m unhappy and yet too lazy to read this. Oh the existential quandary!

It’s weird that this webpage doesn’t have a scroll bar on my iPhone.

A lot of the points in the article coincide with ideas from the blogger Mr. Money Mustache, who frequently reminds that overcoming hardships is a primary source of satisfaction in life. One example is his piece on the desire for luxury as a weakness, which we should reprogram ourselves to get rid of: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mrmoneymustache.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;08&#x2F;29&#x2F;luxury-is-just-another-weakness&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mrmoneymustache.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;08&#x2F;29&#x2F;luxury-is-just-an...</a>

if happy depends on effort when unable to make effort then cannot be happy<p>if learnt to be happy without effort then happy always as it does not depend on any effort or outside influence.. final eternal happiness...

I think advice like this is unfortunately just bullshit. It’s similar to cases of treating depression with drugs when most major depression is actually just a biological response to real, actual sadness and external events.<p>See for example: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grasshoppermouse.github.io&#x2F;2018&#x2F;12&#x2F;16&#x2F;seven-reasons-why-major-depression-is-probably-not-a-brain-disorder&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grasshoppermouse.github.io&#x2F;2018&#x2F;12&#x2F;16&#x2F;seven-reasons-...</a><p>Of course there can be many reasons for depression or unhappiness. Some people sincerely can benefit from medication. Sometimes therapy is the right option.<p>But quite obviously the biggest factor is going to be circumstances. Happiness _should be_ a response to circumstances and improvement. It represents increased utility and benefit for you as a person and <i>obviously</i> the biggest part of that is your circumstances, physical, material, getting needs met, having resources and opportunities.<p>Some part of this can be about contentment or “zen” mental clarity or whatever, but clearly not the majority, or even a large minority.<p>I feel advice like this is meant to placate people and make them docile and capitulated to their circumstances and borderline lobotomize away their drive for things to be better by trying to change happiness from a fact of circumstances to an “attitude adjustment” - which is awful, no matter what positive spin you want to put on it.

Aristotle and Aquinas are indispensible (though you might want to begin with commentaries or approachable introductions, like Feser&#x27;s). Contrary to the liberal tradition, &quot;freedom&quot; is understood as self-mastery not uninhibited indulgence of the passions which leads to misery (hence the Augustinian observation that man has as many masters as he has vices). Aquinas also distinguishes beatitudo from felicitas. You also have the virtues. Happiness is ultimately teleological.<p>Look to the ancients and medievals that we so eagerly forget and dismiss because we think we&#x27;ve unquestionably outdone them. Be careful, though, because your fallacious presuppositions may get in the way. They did for me, but with time, those vicious usurpers, that bad metaphysics, that poor substitute for properly understood science, has given way to a sounder picture of things dislodged from the tyrannical grip of error.<p>All that is to say that you should not be surprised if you find yourself reacting with incredulity until you begin to realize how unfounded and even incoherent it is. Give it time.

Being happy is not complicated. There is no purpose or meaning. Nothing matters on a long enough scale. Live completely in the moment with only select, fundamental long term goals in mind.

mindfullness sounds like new bullshit buzzword that does not mean anything.

<i>Happiness is not an ideal. Happiness is tepid water on the tongue.</i> -- Holderlin<p><i>Man does not desire happiness. Only the Englishman does.</i> -- Nietzsche

I think these are bad tips to be honest. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy - really?<p>People in countries where psychotherapy is not as prevalent as in the US aren&#x27;t necessarily unhappier I think.<p>Some occupations have earned their bad reputation. My opinion. I am not happy with it, but generally quite happy I believe. I don&#x27;t feel too happy about changing my prejudice towards this field.<p>Appreciation of what you have is a form of self reflection. Would be good for the occupation to be honest. Suggestion of this form are also often used as a form of psychological abuse. Also a field where this occupations excels in.