There’s Only Two Types of Happiness
It may not be as complicated as you think it is.
What makes you happy?
Happiness is a desire for each and every one of us, to many of us it’s the ultimate meaning of life, our ‘holy grail’. We must find it. Is it in our work ethic? Our collection of goods? Our diet? Our hobbies? Our skillsets?—friends — love life — family?… Wait, stop!
Early 19th Century. Frédéric Chopin. “After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes then even more, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward.”
Let’s imagine happiness as a stew, with the ingredients as the things we do to improve or decrease our happiness. For many of us the stew of happiness seems to always be a little off in one way or another. Even when it tastes delicious there’s always an ingredient we can add to make it better, or an ingredient we put into it earlier that our pallet has since rejected. Many of us spend our time on this floating ball of rock perfecting the idea of this recipe but we rarely just sit back and eat the damn stew.
There’s a Vietnamese proverb, “Tri tuc, tien tuc, dai tuc, ha thoi tuc” that means, “Settling for good enough is sometimes enough”. If we wait until all our needs and wants are met, we may be waiting our entire lifetime.
Turns out the happiness stew may only need two ingredients after all…
Bring brain to a low and slow simmer and add only:
- Inner Mental Happiness
Buddha. “We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.”
- Outer Shared Happiness
Buddha. “Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”
Part One: Inner Mental Happiness
To me inner mental happiness is the process of receiving a thought from our consciousness, letting it resonate, then putting a positive lens on it. In an average day between 50,000 and 70,000 thoughts reverberate through the 100 billion neuron mass of tissue that is our brain (that’s nearly a thought every second—86,400 seconds in a day), some of these thoughts are positive, some are negative… seems simple enough follow so far, aye?
Shouldn’t it then seem simple that to expect a positive and happy life we must train ourselves to have more positive and happy thoughts? This is the sort of happiness that is built — not found. Why is it that we speak of happiness as if it were something we must find. Did Michael Jordan one day just find himself as the greatest of all time? No — he worked hard for many years to become the GOAT. Why are we in the “pursuit of happiness” and not the “practice of happiness”? After all, practice makes perfect.
~300 BC. Aristotle. “To live happily is an inward power of the soul.”
In the year 2000, the “king of happiness” (as his colleagues in psychology endearingly call him) was undergoing an experiment on a Buddhist Monk deep in a meditative trance. Through the four electrodes that Richard Davidson had attached to the Monks scalp he was able to map electrical activity throughout the Monks’ brain — and what he saw next shocked him. Richard, in a trance of disbelief himself, saw the frontal-lobe (the region where much our of joy shows up) of the Monk light up with spurts of electrical activity. Then the activity intensified, soon the Monks’ frontal-cortex had blossomed into a symphony of electrical activity, like a fireworks show in a dark nights’ sky; each neuron firing and creating a chain reaction of activity. Richard had been studying the link between joy/happiness in the frontal-lobe for quite sometime. This experiment finally gave him indisputable evidence that the link was real… it was scientifically proven that we, humans, have the ability to manifest happiness with nothing other than our thoughts (a deep tranquil meditation in this extraordinary case).
Mid 20th Century. Lama Thubten Yeshe. “Without understanding how your inner nature evolves, how can you possibly discover eternal happiness?…It’s not in the sky or in the jungle; you won’t find it in the air or under the ground. Everlasting happiness is within you, within your psyche, your consciousness, your mind. That’s why it’s important that you investigate the nature of your own mind.”
When we begin to control, analyze and forcefully change our thoughts as they flow into and through our minds quickly we realize the power of intentional mental happiness. This is the power of investigating the nature of your own mind. This isn’t easy, if it were we would all be blissfully happy 24/7.
I struggle with this concept daily, it takes a lot of effort to challenge your own thoughts. I frequently monitor what thoughts enter my consciousness, then I evaluate where my consciousness wants to take that thought next and simply ask myself; “Why?—is this benefitting me in any way?” This question gives me a brief opportunity to evaluate myself, and from there I have a chance to evolve the thought into a different state of existence.
Below is an example of the power of forcing yourself to change how you think, even if the source of the thought or worry doesn’t change or get any better itself. Here we go:
You wake up and immediately the first thought that flows through you is:
“I’m in immense debt, the way out is impossible, but I’ll go to work and live my mediocre life nonetheless.”
Next time you wake up with that negative thought have a little conversation with yourself about it:
“Why? — is this thought benefitting me?” …
“No? — okay, how can I still think about this overwhelmingly negative problem but just a little bit differently?…err…ugh, I guess I’ll give it a shot”…
“I’m in immense debt, the way out will be very difficult, but I’ll go to work and live a life outside of this issue nonetheless.”
1895. Sigmund Freud. “Much will be gained if you transform your hysterical misery into common unhappiness”
The difference wasn’t big, but regardless, a difference in wording was made… by you — for you, to better future you. The slight shift in wording forces yourself to analyze your inner nature, realize a fault in your thought process, and give yourself room to evolve. If you keep forcing yourself to change a recurring worry just slightly each time it comes to you then you’ll soon incorporate solutions and optimism you hadn’t even thought of before. Stop whimsically allowing your thoughts to run the dialogue that is your life. Again, investigate the nature of your own mind! When thoughts are not benefitting us as individuals then it’s our responsibility to identify them and shift them.
Unknown. “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
Part Two: Outer Shared Happiness
We’re taught from a very young age that it is ‘better to give than to receive’, that ‘you ought do unto others as you would have them do unto you’, that ‘sharing is caring’. But do these fluffy, cuddly little aphorisms hold up in the eye of psychologists’ scientific scrutiny? — the answer seems to be a resounding “Yes!”. Through modern MRI technology we’ve seen that the act of giving or sharing joy with others indisputably activates the same regions of the brain that sex and food do, pretty remarkable stuff.
Canadian psychologist Lynn Alden also recently conducted an experiment concluding that much of our own personal happiness is created by nothing other than us being kind and compassionate to one another.
More from Alden herself, “It’s more of an attitude change — being alert of things you can do for other people and doing them spontaneously because you want to do them. It has a side effect of making you feel good, we are actually “hard-wired” to appreciate others’ happiness, especially if we are the source of that happiness.”
The experiment didn’t stop there. 115 participants suffered from high levels of social anxiety, when these participants engaged in acts of kindness (directly with others or indirectly by doing a good deed unknowingly to others) they conjured up a sense of comfortability and courage. Subsequently they found that future social interactions came much easier than before, their overall happiness had increased.
Mid 20th Century. Lama Zopa Rinpoche. “When you have the thought that each being is so precious, then naturally respect comes, then you want to offer service…even just a small thing you can offer, it brings incredible joy and happiness, satisfaction and fulfillment, meaning to life.”
To many of us the idea of outer shared happiness is a very obvious thing. It feels good to do good things for others — most the time. Giving doesn’t always make you feel good, especially if you feel used or abused. It’s important to give within reason. Know your boundaries.
Although the concept seems easy enough, society, particularly capitalistic societies, doesn’t agree that giving is the greatest way to improve yourself. We live in a culture still subscribing to the law of “survival of the fittest”. America seems to value personal gain more than anything else. Far too often we’re partaking in the act of decreasing others self worth or happiness in order to increase our own — it doesn’t take a genius to realize that if everybody is thinking this way nobody will acquire true bliss. “An eye for an eye makes the wh…”— yeah you get it. Suddenly it makes sense as to why American is the richest place on earth yet so many unhappy individuals live here, regardless of socio-economic status.
Buddist Ideals. Shantideva. “Whatever joy there is in this world, all comes from desiring others to be happy. Whatever suffering there is in this world, all comes from desiring myself to be happy.”
So give… try it out. Give selflessly as selfishly as you want. You’re aloud to be greedy when it comes to increasing your happiness by sharing joy with others.
Turn Heat to a Simmer
So now that your happiness stew only has two ingredients left let’s boil them down even more.
Inner Mental Happiness:
- Investigate the inner nature of your mind, then be open to evolving it.
- Have a convo with your consciousness… “Why? — is this thought benefitting me?”
- Problems are a part of life, but ‘worry without resolution’ is a recipe for frustration and/or depression.
- Challenge your thoughts. The only person who can truly challenge your thoughts is…well…you!
- Just because it came to you doesn’t mean you can’t change it.
Outer Shared Happiness:
- Science has proven that sharing joy subsequently increases your own.
- Even the smallest deeds can have great rewards for both parties.
- Don’t give with expectations or until it hurts.
- If you give with expectations of a return act then you’re not actually giving… you’re trading.
- Giving isn’t always pleasurable, be sure you set boundaries and don’t hurt yourself in the process.
- Give selflessly selfishly.
So go ahead… throw your entire happiness stew out! It’s too complicated, old, cyclical and ever cynical— rarely satisfying and ever demanding. Make a new stew with only two ingredients and boil them down to their purest forms.
Late 19th Century. Elbert Hubbard. “Happiness is a habit — cultivate it.”
