Understand that happiness is not a destination but a continuous journey of ‘happierness.’ This foundational shift prevents frustration from seeking an unattainable state of constant bliss.
Recognize that negative emotions (sadness, anger, grief) are essential signals for survival and growth. Accepting and learning from these feelings is crucial for overall well-being.
Don’t just study happiness; actively use its principles to change your own habits and behavior. Turn your scientific toolkit inward to improve your personal happiness.
To significantly increase your happiness, commit to continuously learning about happiness, actively practicing its principles in your life, and then sharing or teaching this knowledge to others. This reinforces your own learning and commitment.
Define your life’s purpose with a clear mission statement, such as ’lifting people up and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love using science and ideas.’ This provides direction and focus for your actions.
Seek enjoyment, which combines pleasure with sociability and memory, over mere pleasure. Solitary pursuit of pleasure often leads to addiction and misery, while shared, memorable experiences foster lasting happiness.
Be wary of activities that provide a lot of pleasure but are consistently done alone, as this indicates a pursuit of pleasure that typically does not lead to happiness. Instead, seek activities that allow for connection and shared experience.
Understand that true satisfaction is derived from effort and hard work, not from ease. Embrace challenges, as the effort invested, even if the outcome is temporary, generates profound satisfaction.
Honestly answer two critical questions: ‘Why are you alive?’ and ‘For what would you be willing to die today?’ Having clear answers to these questions provides coherence, purpose, and significance, preventing a meaning crisis.
Actively engage in difficult or challenging experiences, as these can be powerful catalysts for finding answers to life’s fundamental questions and building a deeper sense of purpose.
Be aware of the evolutionary tendency to focus more on negative experiences. Recognizing this bias helps you put your reactions into context and manage their impact on your well-being.
Record negative events in a journal, then after one month, reflect on what you learned, and after six months, identify any positive outcomes. This practice helps contextualize negativity, understand fading affect bias, and fosters personal growth.
Understand that all emotions, especially negative ones, are vital signals from your body and brain designed to keep you alive and prompt appropriate reactions, rather than being mere nuisances or luxuries.
Recognize when evolutionary emotional responses (e.g., disgust for pathogens) are inappropriately triggered in modern contexts (e.g., by political polarization). Understanding their origin empowers you to consciously manage these reactions.
Develop awareness of your own thinking to consciously choose your emotional reactions. This involves moving from reactive limbic system responses to thoughtful prefrontal cortex decisions, allowing you to manage emotions rather than being managed by them.
Employ practices like meditation (observing yourself with remove), prayer (in a religious context for self-observation), or journaling (writing down limbic system experiences) to engage your prefrontal cortex and gain control over your emotions.
Once metacognitive, you have three options when facing uncomfortable emotions: choose your reaction regardless of the emotion, substitute it with a different emotion, or disregard it by focusing outward. This gives you significant power over your emotional state.
Learn to actively replace undesirable emotions with healthier ones, similar to how caffeine blocks adenosine. For example, some comedians use humor to counter sadness, demonstrating effective and metacognitive emotional management.
When overwhelmed by self-focused emotions, consciously shift your attention to external observations or interactions. This provides relief from self-obsession and is a powerful emotional self-management technique.
Do not suppress or eliminate emotions through addictive behaviors (drugs, alcohol), as they are crucial for your well-being and provide necessary signals for life. Instead, aim to manage and understand them.
Actively serve others and focus on their needs, as this shifts your perspective from the ‘me-self’ (being observed) to the ‘I-self’ (observing life). This is a powerful way to feel better and reduce self-obsession.
Reduce self-obsession by eliminating literal mirrors, social media notifications, and excessive selfies from your life. This encourages an outward focus and allows for a more authentic experience of life.
Engage with awe-inspiring moments through religious faith, philosophical texts (e.g., Stoics), nature, or profound music. These experiences provide deep insights, meaning, and access to unique brain states, contributing to happiness.
Practice mindfulness through prayer, worship, devotion, or meditation to quiet internal distractions. This allows you to be fully present and alive in the moment, extending your experience of life.
Purposely spend time in nature, observing sunsets or walking barefoot, to inspire awe and extinguish the ‘me-self.’ This fosters present-moment awareness and can have unique neurophysiological benefits for well-being.