If yous accept to try to exist cool, you will never be cool. If you have to endeavour to be happy, and so you lot volition never be happy. People these days are just trying too difficult.

When yous're raging pissed and throwing a socket wrench at the neighbor's kids, you lot are not cocky-conscious virtually your country of anger. You are not thinking, "Am I finally angry? Am I doing this right?" No, you're out for blood. Yous inhabit and alive the anger. You are the anger.

And so it's gone. Hopefully before the cops arrive.

Happiness, similar other emotions, is not something yous obtain, merely rather something you inhabit. Information technology is temporary1. E'er.

What this implies is that finding happiness is not achieved in itself, but rather it is the side effect of a particular set of ongoing life experiences. This gets mixed up a lot, particularly since happiness is marketed so much these days as a goal in and of itself. Purchase X and be happy. Learn Y and exist happy. But y'all tin can't purchase happiness and you can't attain happiness. It just is—one time you get other parts of your life in order.

Finding happiness: Tony Montana didn't seem too happy.
Tony Montana didn't seem besides happy.

When most people seek happiness, they are actually seeking pleasure: good nutrient, more than sex activity, more fourth dimension for TV and movies, a new car, parties with friends, full torso massages, losing 10 pounds, condign more popular, and and so on.

Simply while pleasure is groovy, it's not the same as happiness2. Pleasure is correlated with happiness but does not cause it. Ask whatever drug addict how their pursuit of pleasure turned out. Enquire an adulterer who shattered her family unit and lost her children whether pleasure ultimately fabricated her happy. Ask a human who almost ate himself to death how happy pursuing pleasure fabricated him feel.

Pleasure is a false god. Research shows that people who focus their free energy on materialistic and superficial pleasures end up more anxious, more emotionally unstable and less happy in the long-run3. Pleasure is the nearly superficial form of life satisfaction and therefore the easiest. Pleasure is what'southward marketed to u.s.a.. It'south what we fixate on. It'due south what we use to numb and distract ourselves. But pleasure, while necessary, isn't sufficientiv. There'south something more than.

A popular narrative lately is that people are becoming unhappier considering we're all narcissistic and grew upwards being told that we're special unique snowflakes who are going to change the world and we have Facebook constantly telling the states how amazing everyone else's lives are, but non our ain, then nosotros all feel like crap and wonder where it all went wrong. Oh, and all of this happens by the age of 23.

Lamentable, only no. Give people a scrap more credit than that.

For instance, a friend of mine recently started a high-risk business venture. He dried up virtually of his savings trying to make information technology work and failed. Today, he'south happier than always for his feel. Information technology taught him many lessons about what he wanted and didn't want in life and it eventually led him to his current job, which he loves. He'southward able to look back and be proud that he went for information technology because otherwise, he would accept always wondered "what if?" and that would have made him unhappier than any failure would have.

The failure to come across our own expectations is non antithetical to happiness, and I'd actually argue that the ability to fail and still appreciate the experience is actually a fundamental building block for happinessv , 6.

If you thought y'all were going to make $100,000 and drive a Porsche immediately out of college, and then your standards of success were skewed and superficial, you dislocated your pleasure for happiness, and the painful smack of reality hitting you in the face will be one of the best lessons life always gives you.

The "lower expectations" argument falls victim to the same old mindset: that happiness is derived from without. The joy of life is not having a $100,000 salary. It's working to reach a $100,000 bacon, and then working for a $200,000 salary, and so on.

Then, I say raise your expectations. Elongate your process. Lay on your death bed with a to-do list a mile long and smile at the space opportunity granted to you. Create ridiculous standards for yourself and so savor the inevitable failure. Learn from it. Alive it. Permit the ground crack and rocks crumble around you because that's how something amazing grows, through the cracks.

The key to finding happiness: not a fake smileChances are you know someone who always appears to be insanely happy regardless of the circumstances or situation. Chances are this is actually i of the most dysfunctional people you know. Denying negative emotions leads to deeper and more than prolonged negative emotions and emotional dysfunction.

Information technology's a elementary reality: shit happens. Things get incorrect. People upset u.s.. Mistakes are fabricated and negative emotions ascend. And that's fine. Negative emotions are necessary and healthy for maintaining a stable baseline happiness in one's life.

The flim-flam with negative emotions is to ane) express them in a socially acceptable and healthy mode and 2) express them in a style which aligns with your values.

Simple example: A value of mine is to pursue non-violence. Therefore, when I get mad at somebody, I express that anger, only I also make a point to not dial them in the face up. Radical idea, I know. (But I absolutely will throw a socket wrench at the neighbor's kids. Try me.)

There'south a lot of people out there who subscribe to the "e'er be positive" ideology. These people should be avoided but every bit much as someone who thinks the globe is an endless pile of shit. If your standard of happiness is that you're always happy, no matter what, then you need a reality check.

I think role of the attraction of obsessive positivity is the style in which we're marketed to. I think part of it is being subjected to happy, smiley people on television constantly. I think part of it is that some people in the cocky-assist manufacture want you to feel like there'south something wrong with you all the fourth dimension.

Or mayhap it's only that we're lazy, and like anything else, we want the upshot without actually having to do the hard work for it.

Which brings me to what actually drives happiness….

Completing a marathon makes u.s.a. happier than eating a chocolate cake. Raising a child makes united states of america happier than beating a video game. Starting a small business with friends and struggling to make money makes united states happier than buying a new figurer.

And the funny thing is that all three of the activities to a higher place are exceedingly unpleasant and require setting high expectations and potentially declining to always meet them. Withal, they are some of the nigh meaningful moments and activities of our lives. They involve hurting, struggle, even acrimony and despair, yet once we've done them we look dorsum and become misty-eyed about them.

Why?

Considering it's these sorts of activities that allow us to go our ideal selves. It's the perpetual pursuit of fulfilling our ideal selves that grants u.s. happiness, regardless of superficial pleasures or hurting, regardless of positive or negative emotions. This is why some people are happy in war and others are sad at weddings. It's why some are excited to work and others hate parties. The traits they're inhabiting don't align with their ideal selves.

The finish results don't define our ideal selves. It's not finishing the marathon that makes us happy; it's achieving a difficult long-term goal that does. Information technology'southward not having an crawly kid to prove off that makes us happy; it's knowing that y'all gave yourself up to the growth of some other human being beingness that is special. It'southward not the prestige and coin from the new business organization that makes you happy, information technology's the process of overcoming all odds with people you care near.

And this is the reason that trying to be happy inevitably will make you unhappy. Because to attempt to be happy implies that you are non already inhabiting your ideal self, you are non aligned with the qualities of who you lot wish to exist. After all, if y'all were acting out your platonic self, and then you wouldn't feel the demand to try to exist happy.

Cue statements about "finding happiness within," and "knowing that yous're enough." It'south not that happiness itself is in you lot, it's that happiness occurs when you decide to pursue what's in yous.

And this is why happiness is and then fleeting. Anyone who has set out major life goals for themselves only to achieve them and realize that they feel the same relative amounts of happiness/unhappiness knows that happiness e'er feels like it'south around the corner, just waiting for yous to evidence up. No matter where you are in life, you volition e'er perceive in that location to be one more thing you demand to do to be especially happyseven. But it as well, will be a mirage.

And that'southward considering our ideal cocky is always just around that corner, e'er iii steps ahead of us. We dream of being a musician and when we're a musician, we dream of writing a picture score, and when write a motion-picture show score, we dream of writing a screenplay. And what matters isn't that we achieve each of these plateaus of success, but that we're consistently moving towards them, solar day subsequently day, month after month, year later year. The plateaus will come and get, and nosotros'll keep post-obit our ideal self down the path of our lives.

The Key to Finding Happiness Map

And with that, with regards to finding happiness, information technology seems the best advice is also the simplest: Imagine who you want to be and then step towards itviii. Dream big and then do something. Anything9. The elementary deed of moving at all will modify how you feel most the entire procedure and serve to inspire yous farther.

Let become of the imagined result—it'south not necessary. The fantasy and the dream are but tools to go yous off your donkey. Information technology doesn't matter if they come true or not. Alive, man. Just alive. Cease trying to be happy and simply be.