How to live a truly happy life?

ArnoldPalmer said:
This is about happiness, not meaning.
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If you have a meaningful life then you are happy by default. People go about it ass-backwards trying to be happy and then find meaning. Have meaning in what you do and happiness will follow in the pursuit of that meaningful endeavor.

This is why happiness can be had by people who live entirely different lives and careers, because it is the meaning they have in their life that brings them happiness. If happiness was being content, then by definition a dead seal can make an eskimo happy or a guy in the bushes starving eat bugs and be happy - literally. But it will never make you happy. Ergo, rather than trying to find a content and full feeling, start eating and the content feeling will follow.

McDonalds understands this well. Ergo their happy meals.
 
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MadStan said:
If you have a meaningful life then you are happy by default. People go about it ass-backwards trying to be happy and then find meaning. Have meaning in what you do and happiness will follow in the pursuit of that meaningful endeavor.
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See, for me, meaning/purpose to life is as intangible a concept as "living in the moment". If the common secular idea of meaning, is something that you have to give to yourself, then, I dunno, isn't that cheating? Isn't that just a cheap cop-out hit of copium for those who don't have any spiritualism/religion? I am personally made thoroughly uncomfortable by the idea that meaning and purpose are things I should have to define. It's too easy, and worse, you can be wrong about that meaning and purpose. The times I have tried to do that in my life, have not gotten me anything. Maybe this, too, is a dragon.
 
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ArnoldPalmer said:
See, for me, meaning/purpose to life is as intangible a concept as "living in the moment". If the common secular idea of meaning, is something that you have to give to yourself, then, I dunno, isn't that cheating? Isn't that just a cheap cop-out hit of copium for those who don't have any spiritualism/religion? I am personally made thoroughly uncomfortable by the idea that meaning and purpose are things I should have to define. It's too easy, and worse, you can be wrong about that meaning and purpose. The times I have tried to do that in my life, have not gotten me anything. Maybe this, too, is a dragon.
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Interesting thoughts.

Consider this, across the globe there are millions who would never wish to live the way you do, and millions live the way you would never wish to, they have completely different jobs, different beliefs and diets. Almost nothing you and those others have anything in common, but yet both can be happy.

So what is the difference? The pursuit of something, which is pursued because it has meaning to you. Perhaps it is a sport, a hobby, a family or career, or merely just having enough to eat. If a guy wants for food, a bible isn't going to bring him happiness, but a meal might. Just an example. I could never be happy playing golf all day long, but for some it is a dream come true because to them it means something, but for many it could never make them happy.

For a time, setting a record on insane level on Halo for the "Butchers in the Barracks" section made me happy but I grew tired of it. It started to mean...less.
 
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Become very very dumb.

Ibanez RG 350EX said:
Ding ding ding. The promise of happiness is the shell game your brain plays to trick you into performing your various biological imperatives.
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Or maybe the idea that happiness doesn't exist is actually the sour grapes of a dissatisfied brain?

A cruel quirk of happiness is that usually when you're happy, those are the times you aren't thinking that much (flow states, psychologists might call it), and therefore will feel the most fleeting.
A happy person doesn't think much about whether or not they're happy. That type of rumination itself tends to be a product of unhappiness.

That also means that happiness is something that mostly just happens. Someone can make projections about what might lead to happiness, but by and large it just occurs, which is probably why people often have a poor idea of what being happy even means.

The problem then is that because happiness is something that tends to occur as a byproduct, without a greater overriding purpose and an environment that draws someone along, it's unlikely to materialize.

My point is that (at least by my interpretation) happiness exists, but the human brain can't think itself into it no matter how much we would like it to.
 
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The only meaning in life is what you can bring into it. Do well unto others and if possible help them. We are all sacks of bone fat and meat an eventually, when we croak, we won't be able to bring along that 70" tv or the Lexus.
 
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Happiness is something you get to sideways.
If you try and go straight to it, you find it illusive.
But you take the scenic route, and allow yourself to relax, and enjoy the journey, and suddenly you find yourself there.
 
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Ibanez RG 350EX said:
In other words, it's undeniably true but it makes people big sad to acknowledge it.
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Really depends on if you think being contented and being happy are the same thing. If not, and they're somehow mutually exclusive, then you're right. But if you consider contentment to be happiness, or a form of happiness then no because contentment is a long-term achievable state, the threshold for which can be considerably altered by life experiences and emergent circumstances.

I think people are looking for the fleeting kind of happiness and thinking it's the only kind not only that matters but even exists. If you just want to be one kind of happy for the rest of your life being content is doable for a shocking amount of people. And if you think being content by itself is not happiness, develop some form of chronic condition then get back at me about how your opinion has withstood that experience, because I'm pretty sure there's a large number of people out there who would be pretty happy if they could just live their life without knee/back/elbow/wrist/etc pain.

A big obstacle also sometimes seems to be people's self. A lot of times people know exactly what they need to do they just don't want to hear it/think it/acknowledge it.
 
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LurkTrawl said:
I'm pretty sure there's a large number of people out there who would be pretty happy if they could just live their life without knee/back/elbow/wrist/etc pain.
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It's what they think would make them pretty happy, just like other people think a job or a house or a car or solid gold toilet would make them happy. And as soon as they acclimated to not having that pain anymore, they'd go right back on the hamster wheel to nowhere.

That's how we're wired. The Buddhists characterized the problem pretty damn well.
 
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Ibanez RG 350EX said:
It's what they think would make them pretty happy, just like other people think a job or a house or a car or solid gold toilet would make them happy. And as soon as they acclimated to not having that pain anymore, they'd go right back on the hamster wheel to nowhere.

That's how we're wired. The Buddhists characterized the problem pretty damn well.
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Well again that's how it works if you presume happiness is only ever a kind of fleeting joy, and that contentedness can't be considered a form of happiness. Which is what I'm getting at, if you look at happiness as defined only as that sort of joy, then yes you will never find it.

It does seem to kind of work like hypnotism in that you have to be a willing participant. If you aren't willing to be happy in the first place you're obviously never going to be happy.
 
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LurkTrawl said:
Well again that's how it works if you presume happiness is only ever a kind of fleeting joy, and that contentedness can't be considered a form of happiness.
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I don't agree with that at all. I think any notion of long-term "contentedness" is subject to precisely the same shell game as whatever kind of ephemeral elation/bliss/joy you're talking about.

Your brain promises you that something good is on the other side of this mountain and then pulls it away at the last minute. That's fundamentally how human motivation works and so few cotton on to it. They just move on to the next mountain in the distance and never recognize the pattern.
 
That's the thing. It's entirely subjective and based on your own personal values. What works for me is not giving one fuck what anyone thinks of me, structuring my career to leave me as much freedom to be with the people I care about as possible, and to pursue my creative ventures. This is what leads me personally to happiness. It may not be the same for you. It is all just about structuring your life around what you value most. But one thing I would recommend is this. If you're the type of person who will consistently make sacrifices for the sake of others with absolutely nothing but misery expected in return, stop that shit immediately. I learned that lesson this summer. Took me this long to realize I was fucking up my own life by trying to be what's traditionally known as a "good person." You can't bear the weight of the world on your shoulders, whether it's the right thing to do or not. You're only human, and you should focus on yourself primarily.
 
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Ibanez RG 350EX said:
I don't agree with that at all. I think any notion of long-term "contentedness" is subject to precisely the same shell game as whatever kind of ephemeral elation/bliss/joy you're talking about.
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Gratitude and appreciation versus want/relief I guess? That you can be grateful and content with what you have or set reasonable goals and achieve them in the span of your life, and the contentment from that is definitely a long-term achievable state of being.

If you think it's the same thing I guess we can just agree to disagree. I don't think the experience of buying a new car or home is comparable to someone's experience of looking back on their life as they're in their twilight years and being happy with their life.
Ibanez RG 350EX said:
Your brain promises you that something good is on the other side of this mountain and then pulls it away at the last minute. That's fundamentally how human motivation works and so few cotton on to it. They just move on to the next mountain in the distance and never recognize the pattern.
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This isn't exactly esoteric knowledge, adages like "better to have loved and lost", are about this at least in part. It's not a lack of recognition of the pattern so much as it's a recognition that to try for happiness is to at least have a chance at it, to stop following the pattern at all is to guarantee you'll never know it. If you assumed people doing so are the idiots for continuing to follow "the pattern" I'm very sorry.
 
LurkTrawl said:
This isn't exactly esoteric knowledge, adages like "better to have loved and lost"
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That would be something if the problem were limited to "having loved and lost" or coming up short in some other way.

But it's not about justifying failure. It's the recognition that even if you loved and won, even if you are successful in your aims, you end up with the same unsatisfying outcome.
 
Ibanez RG 350EX said:
That would be something if the problem were limited to "having loved and lost" or coming up short in some other way.
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Right, and part of the problem of attempting to explain my side of this is that there's many different positive states that could be described as "happiness" but we all pretty much know and agree on the states that are not happiness. Nobody ever asks what 'sadness' is or how to achieve it, there's never really a discussion necessary on who's definition of 'frustration' will be used in a conversation about that. All I'm saying is, is that you are definitely correct if you only consider happiness to be states of mind that are fleeting.
Ibanez RG 350EX said:
But it's not about justifying failure. It's the recognition that even if you loved and won, even if you are successful in your aims, you end up with the same unsatisfying outcome.
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Is it not a bit of an oversimplification to boil down something as complex as a successful courtship/marriage to a 0/1 reward pathway?
 
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