What is the key to happiness in life, in your opinion?
Thanks.
Being true to yourself and your ideals, without hurting those you love.
Patience in situations where you have no real control over the matter. (Think of a loooooooooooooong plane flight…you can either mumble about how bored you are, or you can sit there, deal, and not let it bother you.) Now apply that to…everything.
Peace of mind. If you have that, then you have everything you need.
Happiness comes from within. If you wait around for other peoples’ actions to make you happy, you’re not going to be very happy.
I used to be somber, morose, and surly. I got tired of that and put my mind to learning to be happy. It took a lot of practice, but I have it mastered now. You get good at what you practice doing.
successful relationships with others- friends or lovers. i think humans are engineered to form relationships, so the act of this naturally keeps us happy.
I’m with bluethree - happiness is a choice that you make.
Money. Everything else can bought.
Satisfaction, with tiny bits of discomfort interspersed so I can still appreciate my good fortune, and a humorous outlook on life.
A loving, friendly relationship with your family. If I raise a happy family, I will be as happy as a clam.
The key to contentment in life is to accept that you will probably never be happy.
Personally, I believe there are two key points to happiness.
First is your Acceptance and Love of you. This does not mean that you like everything about you. It does not mean you are right, perfect, good-looking, kind, etc… It means that at the very center, you accept you humanity, your base thoughts, childish actions, your shortness, your baldness, your whatever…
Second, is the acceptance your place in life. This is not to mean that you live in a box and should stay there. It means that for now, it is OK that you live in a box.
Do more for others; expect less for yourself.
Three things needed to be happy:
Someone to love,
Something to do, and
Something to look forward to.
Ach! I can’t stand all the feeble meaningless cliche answers to this thread ! like “be true to yourself” (sorry guys). I am really sorry but they annoy me so much because they are cryptic, not logical, not proven, and downright feeble.
IMO the real key to happiness is more logical. (it is not easy though)
The key is to NOT try to be happy.
It’s a simplistic version of the buddhist philosophy.
It’s like those chinese finger trap things. If you try to get out you will get stuck more. If you relax and accept that you are stuck, you will be free!
It’s not easy though because when you say to yourself “stop trying to be happy” deeper down you are saying “say ‘stop trying to be happy’ so that you can be happy” which is still trying to be happy. In other words the motive behind telling youself “stop trying to be happy” is to be happy!
To make it work even the motive must go. You must genuinely not care weither you are happy or not. you must genuinely give up trying. Give up wanting. Almost get so fed up trying to be happy that you lose even the desire to be happy.
I haven’t cracked it myself but I’m getting there. every new time I do the right mental thing (complete cessation of the desire to be happy) the resulting happiness lasts longer.
It’s a liberating feeling when I can get it. But I am only human so I often revert back to trying to be happy, simply because I forget how I managed to lose the desire the last time.
Practice makes perfect. and IMO none of those cliched techniques will work.
Ach! I can’t stand all the feeble meaningless cliche answers to this thread ! like “be true to yourself” (sorry guys). I am really sorry but they annoy me so much because they are cryptic, not logical, not proven, and downright feeble.
IMO the real key to happiness is more logical. (it is not easy though)
The key is to NOT try to be happy.
It’s a simplistic version of the buddhist philosophy.
It’s like those chinese finger trap things. If you try to get out you will get stuck more. If you relax and accept that you are stuck, you will be free!
It’s not easy though because when you say to yourself “stop trying to be happy” deeper down you are saying “say ‘stop trying to be happy’ so that you can be happy” which is still trying to be happy. In other words the motive behind telling youself “stop trying to be happy” is to be happy!
To make it work even the motive must go. You must genuinely not care weither you are happy or not. you must genuinely give up trying. Give up wanting. Almost get so fed up trying to be happy that you lose even the desire to be happy.
I haven’t cracked it myself but I’m getting there. every new time I do the right mental thing (complete cessation of the desire to be happy) the resulting happiness lasts longer.
It’s a liberating feeling when I can get it. But I am only human so I often revert back to trying to be happy, simply because I forget how I managed to lose the desire the last time.
Practice makes perfect. and IMO none of those cliched techniques will work.
Followon from my previous post.
I think the reason why it is quite hard and takes a long time to see benefits from the ‘cessation of desire to be happy’ technique is that we have so many distractions in our lives.
I think this is why fundemental buddhists say get rid of all your possetions (thus eliminating most of your distractions and desires) without the possetions we 1. have more time to practice the cessaton and 2. we have less other things to desire, and that may help halt the desire to be happy.
if you manage this technique you can still lead a normal life. you can still get annoyed, sad, bored etc… without the underlying dissatisfaction (resulting from the desire to be happy) all those emotions are more bearable. in fact it is great to be annoyed! or frustrated or sad.
As far as I can put it into an aphorism:
Love the world more than you want the world to love you.
Unhappiness. I was not truly content until I suffered greatly.
Once that was overcome, it’s been all wine and roses, baby!