Small things. Sounds. The temperature of the air. The fact that my side isn’t hurting right now. The kids costumes who were just trick or treating at my house.
Happiness is fleeting, like other emotions, it comes and goes. Focusing on it is like chasing a wave.
Understanding your own values and what you find meaningful is essential for moving through life, because we’re not in control. Stuff happens, and we get to deal with it.
I found happiness. I am almost done with it. You want it after me?
Why are you done with it?
Because it’s my turn next, and they’ve been hogging it all night!
Hey, that guy is hogging all the happiness! Get him!
Gratitude and helping others
Eating people. Eating family and friends, eating vagrants, eating the needy. Some people can even taste the camaraderie of the people they work with.
It comes down to eating people and if you have trouble just eat people. You know what they say hungry people eat people.
WTF?
A few years ago, my wife and I left the Mormon church. That helped a lot. Along that line coffee makes me happy.
Coffee would have made me an apostate too. Damn, I love coffee. Live and drink, friend.
I find happiness getting lost in projects, projects being anything & everything from writing to designing to stuff around the house to whatever. Just something that gets me obsessed for at least a few days or weeks. I can’t predict when it will happen, it just has to be a sufficient problem for me to look at.
I also find happiness with some people, but that sort of happiness is unpredictable as well since people have their own lives going on and feelings can change over time. Getting too close to people though can just as easily make my life feel meaningless and make me depressed when things turn sour. I tend to crave affection and physical touch, so this is a hard one for me to just ignore this.
by not trying to compare themselves to anyone else
Hobbies, spending time wirh friends and families, eating, murdering vagrants, helping the needy, and some people even enjoy comraderie with people they work with.
It comes down to figuring out what makes you happy and if you have trouble you just need to try new things.
Game the system by having an unhappy childhood so being an adult is so much better? I enjoy being a grownup so much. What are you unhappy with? Were you happy as a kid and if so, what made you happy? I didn’t like school, felt alienated and in general kids have no control over their own lives. So adulthood suits me much better.
You nailed it for some of us. What do you do with a guy who went balls to the wall well into his 30s to make up for it?
I’ve felt happiness a few times. I’m thinking it’s time to fight for it.
I do think some (maybe most) of it is luck/brain chemistry, I feel happy a lot as I get older. Part is just that deep appreciation I feel when I wake up and realize that instead of school I will go to a job that pays me. Having kids was stressful but absolutely did increase my enjoyment in life, my desire to live, if that makes sense. More good than bad by a large margin.
Good news is if you are 40-50 you are getting to that age too - news articles say it’s like we sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labor but I think bullshit because I can’t slow down yet and still feel it, it has to be changing brain chemistry and perspective - happiness comes easier now and also fewer things irritate me, youth is an irritable time.
And I guess finally, I really do think luck plays a big part - not in outward circumstances (though obviously luck is very important there too, circumstances don’t guarantee happiness) more in the ability to feel certain things. So my actual advice is to adjust perspective if you can, be grateful for the things you can, get physically active to the extent you can and take time to do pleasurable things because even if you are not wired to feel that rush of “happy” you may still be able to feel content and thankful and good.
That’s the neat part,
We all have happiness, it’s just hard to see it past all the other stuff we got going on in our heads.
Happiness is not found. It’s not an object, rather a state of perception. The more you’ll objectify and discretize happiness, the less likely you’re to achieve it.
That being said, usually drugs.
On a serious note, two books helped me to understand this mystery a bit more
- Zen Mind, beginner’s mind by S. Suzuki
- Flow: the psychology of optimal experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
Saved the recommendations, thanks !
Ah, another non mainstream source of inspirational knowledge is the Blindboy Boatclub podcast. Over years he produced a lot of episodes on the subjects of mental health and experiences delivered in a very democratic, relatable way. Mixed with crazy hot takes, like how Ney York disco was the original punk for/by LGBT community, seasoned with a thickest Limerick accent and storytelling. Delicious.
I think your comment is the key. Many others tell what to do, but yours addresses the core in that you won’t be happy unless you decide or allow yourself to be happy (perception).
I used to mock those people who would say things like “smile in the mirror and tell yourself that it’s going to be a great day”. Later in life, I figured out that that’s what they needed to do, so good for them. For me, it’s something else. I need to be around nature to ground my feelings. Other times, it’s physical cardiac exertion, like a bike ride.
Medication can help if there’s a real medical problem, like depression. Self medicating can be dangerous.
By finding not happiness, but contentment. As you get older, you learn that to be happy, you have to be content.
- Take time off from social media once in a while, or at least avoid doomscrolling all day. Bad stories generate FAR more engagement than good stories, and every form of media knows this. If 100,000 people in your area have an average-to-good day and 5 people have terrible days, all 5 stories presented to you will detail how things are in your area are terrible.
- Physical health affects mental health and vice versa. Eat healthy (or healthier). Stay hydrated. Get 7-9 hours of sleep regularly and use sleep hygeine. Get 90+ minutes of exercise (anything that raises your heartrate) a week which is like 15 minutes/day. Don’t worry about doing it all immediately - if you try to change everything at once you’re more likely to get overwhelmed and burn out. It’s way better to make slow, sustainable changes over months than it is to do a difficult crash course for a short time and get fed up with the process.
- Do thankfulness exercises. When I go to bed at night I think of 3 things I’m thankful for in the day. On average or bad days it may be that I wasn’t in constant/chronic pain, that I got to eat and drink, and that I’m in a safe place and a soft bed. Just remembering those basics (that many of us take for granted) helps keep me aware of good things in my life.
- Find ways to enjoy hobbies that require participation - arts, sports, board/video games, whatever. Just something other than passively taking in TV/online media. This will help you feel engaged and double points if it’s something that allows for improvement because you’ll feel rewarded as you get better.
