You can do all of these things and it won't make you happy. Barring any clinical depression issues, "happiness" is a choice to accept the conditions in which you live and to just Be Happy. If you ever start a sentence with "I'll be happy when..." then you are not ever going to be happy.
I had to learn this the hard way. Almost everything I owned was destroyed in a flood a couple of years ago. I watched one of my housemates freak out and cry for days about it. It couldn't have been shoved in my face harder that the choice was mine. I could assume that happiness came from the lifestyle I designed for myself, as my housemate did, and therefore it had just been completely destroyed with no hope of coming back any time soon. Or, I could assume happiness was a state of being that could be achieved at any point in time, no matter what was going on: that there are no prerequisites to happiness.
And suddenly, I was happy.
And then I met my wife. And I got to more work that I loved, rather than needed. And found a modicum of success in my consultancy. And got out of debt. And made a lot of new, wonderful friends. After years of being unhappy and getting nowhere on the goals that I thought would make me happy, I flipped a switch and found out that the goals required happiness out of me.
I had a strange moment of mental serenity during an earthquake a couple of years ago. Furniture was rolling around the place and glass was smashing, my heart rate was about 180 and my respiration the same, but I had a moment of complete mental quiet as I realised it didn't matter what got lost or broken.
I've never really believed that "you don't own your stuff - your stuff owns you"; I've always thought that was claptrap. But it was interesting to me that in the face of losing all my stuff it didn't really bother me too much.
Yeah, when I first saw the damage from the flood, I said to myself, "funny that the microwave that I never use wasn't destroyed". And at that very moment, the stack of cardboard boxes it was sitting on finally gave way and dumped the thing into hip-high water.
Sometimes, the universe provides enough randomness to just let you stumble on counterexamples to your theorems.
I read a book awhile back that kind of embodies the points you made about happiness. It is titled "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy" [1].
I feel like your story about the flood would have fit right in with the theme of the book.
One story from the book concerns Musonious, a stoic who is exiled from his home, deprived of his country, family and friends and ultimately forced to live on a "worthless", barren island. Even through all this he is still is able to find happiness by changing his state of mind about his circumstances.
When I was at university I was very unhappy. One night, sitting alone in my flat, I experienced a moment of total contentment - pretty much out of the blue. I've only experienced such a moment twice in my life; to be so totally at peace with everything. The other time was when I was thirteen, wandering around town at night, and looked up at a really beautiful shot of the moon.
After the second time, I told myself that the key to being happy was to stop being unhappy - that it was a state of mind. But it didn't work. I had no idea how to just make a choice to be happy, or even to stop being sad. Just recognising that it was true didn't change anything for me - despite having experienced that it was possible. I can make a choice to pick up a pencil but I can't even visualise happiness - it's not an object I can represent in my head as something I can perform operations on in the same sense that numbers are.
I wasn't really happy until I left university and started doing things that I cared about.
One of my friends, who used to do a lot of drugs, wasn't really happy until she got her husband and kid.
I'm not gonna say it's different for everyone, because there are obviously common themes. But I suspect there are some variances in how people are wired up. (For example of another instance of people being wired up differently, some people count audibly in their heads, whereas others visualise numbers - and this is testable by asking groups of people to speak and count a certain period of time out. (See What Do You Care What Other People Think? )) As such, while I'd urge people to try just being happy, if they can, I'd hesitate to tell people that if they think they need something to be happy they're never going to be happy. I've seen people who think they need things to be happy, and after getting those things they seem subsequently to have been happy.
I'm getting to this point in my life right now. Realising and trying to accept happiness is a state of mind. It's rather new to me and it's a struggle most days. Any advice?
In the early days, it was easy for me with the flood fresh in my mind, I could say, "at least I didn't get dysentery." Living in a 1st world country tends to give one a lot of things for which they should really rather be grateful.
I try to remember that I live in the absolute best times in history. 200 years ago, even kings couldn't live as well as I do, now. I've got air conditioning. I've got running water that is both hot AND cold. None of my family died from tuberculosis. I can be reasonably sure nobody is going to invade my country and kill my kin. I don't personally know anyone who has ever had dysentery.
And sometimes I just wallow in sadness. It feels good sometimes. Sleep in. Eat a cheeseburger. Eat 3 cheeseburgers. Play a video game. Play a video game for 5 hours. Sometimes things have to get worse before they are big enough to get rid of.
It's a conscious decision, every day. That's part of why I go by "moron4hire". It's a reminder that, despite my ambitions and my progress, I'm a base idiot compared to some other people. I still work and try to do more, but it's because I know that it will help people, not because it will make me happy.
For me, it's simply about making the choice again and again. It still hasn't become natural, but the realisation itself that I have a choice to be happy is helpful, even if I sometimes struggle with actually making the choice.
Well, if you just imagine for a second that you're dead now, and none of the happy things are available for you: walking. smiling, talking, even breathing. Nothing. You can't lift your hand and your hand is not yours. If you really Can imagine this, then none of the struggles are left. Life is freedom to be happy Every single moment. Or not to be. You decide:).
That gratitude habit helps. Try writing down 3 things a day for a few weeks that you're grateful for. It'll force you to actively seek positive, fulfilling things in your life. Hopefully it'll soak up some of the time you would spend thinking about things you're lacking.
I had to learn this the hard way. Almost everything I owned was destroyed in a flood a couple of years ago. I watched one of my housemates freak out and cry for days about it. It couldn't have been shoved in my face harder that the choice was mine. I could assume that happiness came from the lifestyle I designed for myself, as my housemate did, and therefore it had just been completely destroyed with no hope of coming back any time soon. Or, I could assume happiness was a state of being that could be achieved at any point in time, no matter what was going on: that there are no prerequisites to happiness.
And suddenly, I was happy.
And then I met my wife. And I got to more work that I loved, rather than needed. And found a modicum of success in my consultancy. And got out of debt. And made a lot of new, wonderful friends. After years of being unhappy and getting nowhere on the goals that I thought would make me happy, I flipped a switch and found out that the goals required happiness out of me.