If you take to try to be cool, you volition never be absurd. If you accept to try to be happy, then yous will never exist happy. People these days are just trying too hard.

When you're raging pissed and throwing a socket wrench at the neighbour'due south kids, you are non cocky-witting about your state of anger. You are not thinking, "Am I finally aroused? Am I doing this right?" No, y'all're out for blood. You inhabit and live the anger. Y'all are the anger.

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

Happiness, like other emotions, is not something y'all obtain, merely rather something you inhabit. It is temporary1. Ever.

What this implies is that finding happiness is not achieved in itself, but rather information technology is the side upshot of a particular set of ongoing life experiences. This gets mixed upwards a lot, especially since happiness is marketed so much these days as a goal in and of itself. Buy X and be happy. Learn Y and be happy. But you can't buy happiness and you lot tin can't achieve happiness. It just is—in one case you become other parts of your life in order.

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

When well-nigh people seek happiness, they are actually seeking pleasure: skillful food, more sex, more than time for TV and movies, a new machine, parties with friends, total torso massages, losing ten pounds, becoming more popular, and so on.

But while pleasure is great, information technology'south not the aforementioned as happiness2. Pleasure is correlated with happiness but does not cause information technology. Inquire any drug aficionado how their pursuit of pleasance turned out. Ask an adulterer who shattered her family and lost her children whether pleasure ultimately fabricated her happy. Ask a man who almost ate himself to death how happy pursuing pleasure fabricated him feel.

Pleasure is a false god. Inquiry shows that people who focus their energy on materialistic and superficial pleasures stop up more anxious, more than emotionally unstable and less happy in the long-run3. Pleasure is the most superficial form of life satisfaction and therefore the easiest. Pleasure is what's marketed to the states. It'southward what we fixate on. It's what we use to numb and distract ourselves. Just pleasure, while necessary, isn't sufficient4. There'south something more.

A pop narrative lately is that people are becoming unhappier because we're all narcissistic and grew up existence told that we're special unique snowflakes who are going to alter the world and we accept Facebook constantly telling the states how amazing everyone else's lives are, simply not our own, and so nosotros all feel similar crap and wonder where it all went wrong. Oh, and all of this happens by the historic period of 23.

Sorry, but no. Give people a bit more credit than that.

For case, a friend of mine recently started a high-adventure business venture. He dried up most of his savings trying to make it work and failed. Today, he's happier than ever for his feel. It taught him many lessons about what he wanted and didn't want in life and it somewhen led him to his current job, which he loves. He's able to look back and exist proud that he went for it because otherwise, he would have ever wondered "what if?" and that would have made him unhappier than any failure would accept.

The failure to meet our ain expectations is not antithetical to happiness, and I'd really fence that the ability to fail and still appreciate the experience is really a fundamental building block for happinessv , 6.

If you thought you were going to make $100,000 and drive a Porsche immediately out of higher, then your standards of success were skewed and superficial, you confused your pleasure for happiness, and the painful smack of reality hitting yous in the face up volition be ane of the all-time 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'south working to reach a $100,000 salary, and then working for a $200,000 salary, and and then on.

So, I say raise your expectations. Elongate your process. Lay on your decease bed with a to-do list a mile long and smile at the infinite opportunity granted to you. Create ridiculous standards for yourself and and so savor the inevitable failure. Acquire from it. Alive it. Let the ground fissure 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 e'er appears to be insanely happy regardless of the circumstances or state of affairs. Chances are this is actually one of the nigh dysfunctional people you know. Denying negative emotions leads to deeper and more prolonged negative emotions and emotional dysfunction.

It's a simple reality: shit happens. Things become wrong. People upset us. Mistakes are made and negative emotions arise. And that's fine. Negative emotions are necessary and healthy for maintaining a stable baseline happiness in ane'south life.

The fox with negative emotions is to 1) limited them in a socially acceptable and healthy manner and ii) express them in a way which aligns with your values.

Simple example: A value of mine is to pursue non-violence. Therefore, when I get mad at somebody, I limited that anger, merely I likewise brand a point to non punch them in the face. Radical thought, I know. (Simply I absolutely will throw a socket wrench at the neighbor's kids. Try me.)

There's a lot of people out in that location who subscribe to the "always be positive" credo. These people should exist avoided just equally much as someone who thinks the world is an countless pile of shit. If your standard of happiness is that you lot're always happy, no affair what, and then you need a reality check.

I think part of the allure of obsessive positivity is the style in which we're marketed to. I think role of it is being subjected to happy, smiley people on television constantly. I think part of it is that some people in the cocky-help industry desire you to experience like there's something wrong with y'all all the time.

Or perhaps it'due south just that nosotros're lazy, and like anything else, we want the result without actually having to exercise the hard piece of work for it.

Which brings me to what really drives happiness….

Completing a marathon makes us happier than eating a chocolate cake. Raising a kid makes us happier than beating a video game. Starting a small-scale business with friends and struggling to make money makes us happier than ownership a new computer.

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 e'er run into them. Notwithstanding, they are some of the well-nigh meaningful moments and activities of our lives. They involve pain, struggle, even anger and despair, even so once we've washed them we look back and get misty-eyed about them.

Why?

Because information technology's these sorts of activities that allow us to become our platonic selves. It's the perpetual pursuit of fulfilling our ideal selves that grants usa happiness, regardless of superficial pleasures or pain, regardless of positive or negative emotions. This is why some people are happy in war and others are sorry 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 end results don't define our ideal selves. It's not finishing the marathon that makes us happy; it'south achieving a difficult long-term goal that does. It's non having an crawly child to show off that makes us happy; it's knowing that you gave yourself upwards to the growth of some other human being being that is special. It's not the prestige and coin from the new business concern that makes y'all happy, it's the process of overcoming all odds with people you care most.

And this is the reason that trying to exist happy inevitably volition make you unhappy. Considering to try to be happy implies that yous are not already inhabiting your ideal self, you are not aligned with the qualities of who you wish to be. After all, if you were interim out your ideal cocky, then you wouldn't feel the need to try to be happy.

Cue statements most "finding happiness inside," and "knowing that you're enough." Information technology'south not that happiness itself is in you, it'south that happiness occurs when you determine to pursue what's in you.

And this is why happiness is so fleeting. Anyone who has ready 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 always feels similar it'south effectually the corner, just waiting for you to show up. No affair where you lot are in life, you will e'er perceive there to be one more than thing you demand to do to exist peculiarly happy7. But information technology also, will exist a mirage.

And that's because our ideal cocky is always just effectually that corner, always 3 steps ahead of us. We dream of being a musician and when we're a musician, we dream of writing a film score, and when write a moving-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, twenty-four hour period after day, month after month, year later year. The plateaus will come and go, and we'll continue following our platonic self down the path of our lives.

The Key to Finding Happiness Map

And with that, with regards to finding happiness, it seems the best advice is also the simplest: Imagine who you want to be and and then step towards it8. Dream big and and so practice something. Anything9. The simple act of moving at all will change how you feel nearly the entire process and serve to inspire yous farther.

Let go of the imagined event—information technology's not necessary. The fantasy and the dream are merely tools to get y'all off your ass. Information technology doesn't matter if they come up true or non. Live, man. Just live. Stop trying to be happy and just be.