Self-awareness: the only path to happiness

It has been said that we humans truly don’t know what makes us happy. We are innate happiness hunters, but more often than not our pursuits of happiness end in disappointment. Though we are said to be the most intelligent species on the face of the earth, we obviously have a tendency to forget the bitter aftertastes that our attempts at happiness leave and find ourselves in an eternal loop of repeated activities that come up short every time.
I have personally awoken and have decided to never again give into the lie. The lie that things external to myself can evoke lasting happiness. The lie that the next gadget, slice of cake, job or sensual rendezvous will provide the long term satisfaction that we all crave. The truth is, all these things offer pleasure in the moment, but they are a colossal failure at providing long lasting happiness.
The paradox of life is that it’s the difficult and sometimes arduous things in life that lead to true happiness. The things that we dread doing — when done — leave us feeling elated with no ‘hang over’. I feel foolish that I am a grown middle aged man who is only now waking up to this reality. But the sad fact is that some people live their entire lives and never wake up. They continually seek short term highs and miss out on the joy that life could bring them.
There is a quote by an unknown author that sums up how to live the good life: “If you would live your life with ease, do what you ought and not what you please.” The truth is our evolutionary past makes it that more difficult to do what we ought. Many of the craving that we currently struggle with served a good purpose when we existed as foragers combing the savannahs. However, in a world where everything is available at the push of a button, it becomes that more difficult to not get engulfed by excesses.
We do however have a weapon that if used skillfully can help us to navigate the modern world. This weapon is self-awareness. Being self-aware is the opposite of operating on auto-pilot. It is being aware of your environment, your mood and the situations you find yourself in twenty four seven. It is absolutely the only way to successfully navigate our modern world. It used to be said that knowledge is power, but what use is knowledge if you are not aware of when and in what situations its best applied.
Our habits lead us to our destiny and I would like to posit that one of the best habits that we can develop is self-awareness. It is difficult and will be initially tiring to be on your p’s and q’s every single moment of the day. But most things are challenging when we first try them — like learning to walk. But once honed, self-awareness will save us from succumbing to the pull of our vices as we PAUSE (patient analysis under stressful events) and observe what is really happening and take corrective action to prevent us from doing things that we will later regret.
So let’s not live out our days by merely going with the flow, let’s resolve to be self-aware so that we can ensure that we only pursue the things that offer lasting happiness. For only then will we truly be able to enjoy the life that we have been blessed with.
