How to be happy, part 2
This is part 2. If you haven’t read part 1, stop and read How to be happy.
Ok, you’re back. If you haven’t tried to spend a day just doing whatever you can to make other people happy, then go back to part 1. You’re cheating and not really serious about being happy. You want to solve the problem of happiness and understand it intellectually, but you don’t want to go out and do the things necessary to be happy.
If this is you, go back and read part 1 over and over until you actually decide to spend a day which is all about other people’s happiness.
You can’t think your way to happiness. You have to take action.
If you took the day and need more explanation — well, actually you don’t. Just go take another day and make it about other people’s happiness. Then another, then another. Then one day, you’ll wake up and realize how happy you are.
You really don’t need to read anymore. Just do steps 1, 2 and 3.
But some people are stubborn and need to know how this works. This article is for you.
If you’re still cheating and are reading part 1 and 2 back to back, face it, you don’t really want to be happy. Stop pretending you want to be happy and admit you like being miserable. Go to Facebook and wallow in how happy everyone else seems. When you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired, come on back and do part 1.
We’ll still be here with happiness for you.
Ok, for those who took the day to make others happy, more details on the steps and why they work.
Stop trying to be happy.
Like most truths in life, this one is a paradox. Just like ‘ the more times you fail, the more likely you are to succeed,’ ‘the more you know, the more you realize how ignorant you are’ and ‘more choices results in less satisfaction,’ this one sounds illogical. But it’s truth.
By searching for happiness, you start with the presumption that you aren’t happy. That’s mistake number one. Humans can have everything taken from them in life — their possessions, family, freedom, everything — and no matter how dire their circumstances they always have one and only one thing- the ability to determine their attitude towards any particular situation.
By trying to find something which makes you happy, you deny this essential truth. You externalize the source of your happiness to something out there rather than something inside you. This presumption eliminates your responsibility as the source of your happiness.
So stop trying to be happy. Every time you chase happiness, you ensure you will not be happy.
I’m not going to tell you just be happy. That would be asinine. Some people have depression and can’t just pick their mood. If you knew how to just be happy, you wouldn’t be reading this. Anyone who tells you to just pick your mood is shallow and full of themselves. This myth causes so much unhappiness because then people blame themselves for not having a positive attitude, which makes them more unhappy.
You can’t think your way to happiness.
You have to take action to be happy.
Onward…
Help others to do whatever makes them happy
Some people just know what makes them happy. They know it and do it and are happy. Some people are just happy without any good reason. They pick their attitude. Others aren’t happy and don’t know what will make them happy.
This is the group that needs to focus on others. If you’re in this third group, give up your search for what makes you happy. If you haven’t found it yet, and you can’t generate that happy attitude internally, then you have to try the option you almost certainly haven’t tried yet.
Help others to be happy.
Clean the house for your partner/friend/parent and leave them little love notes around the home. Volunteer at a homeless shelter. Tutor underprivileged children. Go onto Craigslist>volunteers and pick anything that looks remotely interesting or where you have any competency. Give of yourself to help others.
Try it. It’s pretty hard to be unhappy when you’re making other people’s lives better in a tangible way. It’s hard not to smile when you’re helping other people to smile.
Instead of moaning to family, friends and romantic partners about how lost you are and how you can’t find your happiness, give that story up and just focus on making them happy. That’s your path.
Have you ever gone a whole month trying to make someone else’s life happy?
Or do you just complain when they don’t make YOU happy?
You’ve probably never tried it.
Try it for a day, and see how much better your life is because their life is better. Then try it for a week. Then a month. Then a year.
You’ll be happy
You’ll find your happiness, but it’s probably wont look like what you expected. Rather than a laughing, giggling, smiling kind of happy, the satisfaction you get from helping others is a warm, deep contentment, also known as joy.
You see, happiness is dualistic; it is the flip side of unhappiness. They’re like two sides of the same coin and you’re either one or the other. Happy, unhappy, unhappy, happy, happy, unhappy — ad infinitum until you die. These are descriptions of transient mood states that fluctuate throughout life depending on external circumstances.
Joy has no opposite. It is a feeling of deep profound purpose, contentment and confidence that your life has meaning and that meaning is making a positive difference in the world. You can be unhappy, afraid, in pain and heartbroken, and still feel joy in life.
And this is why joy is the ultimate goal.
For many people, joy comes from no place except helping other people to be happy. You’re probably one of those people.
Yeah, I tricked you. Happiness comes and goes like flowers in a field, blooming and withering depending on the weather — just like all the other emotions. Joy is like the boulder in the middle of the field, once it’s there it’s going to stay there, relatively unchanged, no matter what life throws at it. You can make it bigger, and external circumstances can wear it down over time, but it takes a lot to affect the boulder.
And the more joy you make for yourself, the more resilient you’ll be in any circumstances.
Forget about happiness. Use your service to others to build a strong foundation of joy in life. Then you can experience the full gamut of emotions without them tossing you to and fro. Underneath the positive and negative feelings, there will always be a solid foundation for you to rely on.
And eventually you’ll learn that when you have a solid foundation of joy, you can appreciate and learn from anything life throws at you — anything.
Now get out there and go help someone smile.
~
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