".... and being proud is the most reliable source of happiness that I know."[https://tim.blog/2018/02/03/the-tim-ferriss-show-transcripts...]
Teach yourself how to cook, get in shape, draw a picture, write a story, help someone less fortunate, teach someone something you know, learn how to juggle... In the end it doesn't really matter what it is but you will have that proud feeling and be happy in that moment. Rinse and repeat.
What I have found permanently effective is practicing gratefulness. Every day I make it a point to think of things that I am genuinely grateful to have, or to have experienced. This (for me), more than anything else, helps put my mind at ease, and allow me to enjoy the life that I have.
The issue is this is hard and takes a lot of dedicated work to do.
If you took away my marriage and job, I would be markedly more unhappy. I imagine if I ever have a big wad of cash sitting around, I would be a bit less happy if that disappeared too (only because keeping it around certainly would only keep me at the status quo, if not make me more happy).
What's that they say about coming into a lot of money, that it just reveals who your true self is?
And yes, some people get into crappy marriages or crappy jobs where they just get knocked down 24/7. But I've observed that negative people easily self-prophesy into negative situations far more often than positive people.
edit: added points
Are we talking about feeling happiness twice as much as feeling sadness? 4x, 10x? Sadness can come from things outside our control.
I think a better goal is are you present? Are you listening to yourself and to what you really want for your life?
Everyone will want different things but making an emotion the goal is a fools errand.
But does that really mean that being happy is not a choice?
A paraplegic is unable to choose to move their legs due to a medical condition - would they assert that 'moving your legs is not a choice'?
I'm far more apt to believe that people's lives are getting worse and that they're depressed as a result. People are lonelier than ever and society's problems are bigger and more abstract than ever.
We're no longer even cogs in a machine, we're atoms in a cog. Meaning in life has become extremely elusive.
The really insidious thing is that many of the big players and driving forces behind these trends saw it coming, knew that what they were building may have far-reaching negative consequences, and then chose to do it anyway for the sake of money. What a time to be alive, right?
This is why when people start on antidepressants it is a process of trying different ones until they find one that works.
> “Capitalist realism insists on treating mental health as if it were a natural fact, like weather (but, then again, weather is no longer a natural fact so much as a political-economic effect). In the 1960s and 1970s, radical theory and politics (Laing, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, etc.) coalesced around extreme mental conditions such as schizophrenia, arguing, for instance, that madness was not a natural, but a political, category. But what is needed now is a politicization of much more common disorders. Indeed, it is their very commonness which is the issue: in Britain, depression is now the condition that is most treated by the NHS. In his book The Selfish Capitalist, Oliver James has convincingly posited a correlation between rising rates of mental distress and the neoliberal mode of capitalism practiced in countries like Britain, the USA and Australia. In line with James’s claims, I want to argue that it is necessary to reframe the growing problem of stress (and distress) in capitalist societies. Instead of treating it as incumbent on individuals to resolve their own psychological distress, instead, that is, of accepting the vast privatization of stress that has taken place over the last thirty years, we need to ask: how has it become acceptable that so many people, and especially so many young people, are ill?”
Some good articles on the political-economic phenomenon of depression, the response of mainstream treatment techniques and mental health in general:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/16/mental...
Then there is the depression you get after a bad relationship, or as you said, an increasingly individualistic and adversarial consumer society that goers against our social instincts.
> “The current ruling ontology denies any possibility of a social causation of mental illness. The chemico-biologization of mental illness is of course strictly commensurate with its depoliticization. Considering mental illness an individual chemico-biological problem has enormous benefits for capitalism. First, it reinforces Capital’s drive towards atomistic individualization (you are sick because of your brain chemistry). Second, it provides an enormously lucrative market in which multinational pharmaceutical companies can peddle their pharmaceuticals (we can cure you with our SSRls). It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; and the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism.”
The path to become happy isn't instant though, it's much more complex than flipping a light switch, it's definitely harder for some than others (and possibly even impossible for some sadly), but for sure, you need to decide to become happy if you ever want to be.
Jordan Peterson, who for a long time I wrote off as a crackpot until I actually paid attention to some of his interviews and lectures, talks a lot about this. Happiness is a pretty crappy goal to have. It's a side effect of pursuing actual, worthwhile goals. People need to take some responsibility for their own state of mind and the things they are choosing to do that affect it.
It's a response. Internal responses, sure, but also - and more dramatically - to external ones.
> Jordan Peterson, who for a long time I wrote off as a crackpot
Trust your initial instincts ;)
It helps his cause that many criticisms of him are terrible and involve many fabrications.
This youtube channel contra points is a much better criticism then mine: https://youtu.be/4LqZdkkBDas
Fobbing that off as "well he's just being mean to us nice people", when they went after his career and means of supporting his family (at the time), doesn't cut it.
Also, worthy goals often bring pain. They often require you to forego own hapiness for something you consider more valuable. They often leave you burnout, feeling empty, unsatisfied and tired maybe even ressentfull. In particular, caregiving work is often like that. Soldiers also follow goals worthy to them (whether you personally agree or not with this or that goal) and are not happier in the result - it is called sacrifice for a reason. Those two are just obvious examples, not the only ones.
In addition to all that, your own happy personally worthy goal often brings unhappiness to somebody else, often to familly. It is extremely unfair to then blame that person for his or her own unhappiness since that has a lot to do with mine (or yours) decisions.
There is no job, no amount of money, no relationship, which will make you feel whole and happy and content and done. The opposite doesn't hold - there are jobs and relationships and financial strains which will certainly keep you from being happy.
The goal isn't for a job or a relationship to make you happy. It's to enable other things which are your goals, which may or may not be happiness related.