If you accept to try to be cool, yous volition never be cool. If yous accept to try to be happy, then you will never be happy. People these days are just trying too hard.

When you're raging pissed and throwing a socket wrench at the neighbour's kids, you lot are not self-conscious about your country of acrimony. You are non thinking, "Am I finally angry? Am I doing this right?" No, you're out for blood. Y'all inhabit and live the anger. Yous are the anger.

And so it's gone. Hopefully before the cops arrive.

Happiness, like other emotions, is not something you lot obtain, but rather something yous inhabit. It is temporaryone. Always.

What this implies is that finding happiness is not achieved in itself, but rather information technology is the side effect of a particular set of ongoing life experiences. This gets mixed up a lot, especially since happiness is marketed so much these days as a goal in and of itself. Buy 10 and be happy. Acquire Y and be happy. Only you lot can't purchase happiness and you tin't achieve happiness. Information technology just is—once you go other parts of your life in order.

Finding happiness: Tony Montana didn't seem too happy.
Tony Montana didn't seem besides happy.

When most people seek happiness, they are actually seeking pleasure: adept nutrient, more sex, more time for TV and movies, a new car, parties with friends, full body massages, losing 10 pounds, becoming more than popular, then on.

But while pleasure is great, information technology'due south non the same as happinessii. Pleasure is correlated with happiness but does not crusade it. Ask whatever drug addict how their pursuit of pleasure turned out. Inquire an adulterer who shattered her family and lost her children whether pleasance ultimately fabricated her happy. Ask a man who almost ate himself to death how happy pursuing pleasure made him feel.

Pleasure is a simulated god. Enquiry shows that people who focus their free energy on materialistic and superficial pleasures finish up more anxious, more than emotionally unstable and less happy in the long-run3. Pleasure is the most superficial form of life satisfaction and therefore the easiest. Pleasure is what's marketed to united states of america. Information technology'due south what we fixate on. It'southward what we use to numb and distract ourselves. Just pleasance, while necessary, isn't sufficientfour. There'south something more than.

A popular narrative lately is that people are condign unhappier because nosotros're all egotistic and grew upwards beingness told that we're special unique snowflakes who are going to modify the world and we have Facebook constantly telling us how amazing anybody else'south lives are, but not our ain, so nosotros all experience similar crap and wonder where information technology all went wrong. Oh, and all of this happens by the age of 23.

Sorry, but no. Give people a bit more credit than that.

For instance, a friend of mine recently started a high-take chances business venture. He dried upward most of his savings trying to make it work and failed. Today, he's happier than ever for his experience. It taught him many lessons nearly what he wanted and didn't want in life and it eventually led him to his electric current job, which he loves. He'southward able to look back and be proud that he went for it because otherwise, he would have always wondered "what if?" and that would take fabricated him unhappier than any failure would accept.

The failure to meet our own expectations is not antithetical to happiness, and I'd actually fence that the ability to neglect and still appreciate the experience is actually a key building block for happiness5 , 6.

If you lot thought you were going to brand $100,000 and bulldoze a Porsche immediately out of college, then your standards of success were skewed and superficial, you lot confused your pleasure for happiness, and the painful smack of reality hitting you in the confront will be ane of the best lessons life e'er gives you.

The "lower expectations" statement falls victim to the same sometime mindset: that happiness is derived from without. The joy of life is not having a $100,000 salary. It'southward working to accomplish a $100,000 salary, and then working for a $200,000 salary, and and then on.

And so, I say enhance your expectations. Elongate your procedure. Lay on your decease bed with a to-do list a mile long and smiling at the space opportunity granted to you. Create ridiculous standards for yourself and then savor the inevitable failure. Learn from information technology. Live it. Allow the ground crack and rocks crumble around you because that's how something astonishing grows, through the cracks.

The key to finding happiness: not a fake smileChances are you know someone who always appears to exist insanely happy regardless of the circumstances or situation. Chances are this is really i of the most dysfunctional people yous know. Denying negative emotions leads to deeper and more prolonged negative emotions and emotional dysfunction.

Information technology'due south a elementary reality: shit happens. Things get wrong. People upset us. Mistakes are made and negative emotions ascend. And that'due south fine. Negative emotions are necessary and salubrious for maintaining a stable baseline happiness in 1'due south life.

The trick with negative emotions is to one) express them in a socially acceptable and healthy manner and 2) express them in a manner which aligns with your values.

Simple instance: A value of mine is to pursue not-violence. Therefore, when I go mad at somebody, I express that anger, but I too make a betoken to not punch them in the face. Radical idea, I know. (But I admittedly will throw a socket wrench at the neighbour'south kids. Try me.)

There'due south a lot of people out in that location who subscribe to the "always be positive" ideology. These people should be avoided merely every bit much every bit someone who thinks the world is an countless pile of shit. If your standard of happiness is that yous're e'er happy, no matter what, then you demand a reality bank check.

I call back part of the allure of obsessive positivity is the style in which nosotros're marketed to. I think office of information technology is being subjected to happy, smiley people on television constantly. I think part of information technology is that some people in the self-help manufacture desire you lot to experience similar there'due south something wrong with you lot all the time.

Or peradventure it'southward just that nosotros're lazy, and like annihilation else, we want the outcome without really having to do the difficult work for information technology.

Which brings me to what actually drives happiness….

Completing a marathon makes us happier than eating a chocolate cake. Raising a child makes united states of america happier than beating a video game. Starting a small business concern with friends and struggling to make money makes us happier than ownership a new reckoner.

And the funny thing is that all three of the activities above are exceedingly unpleasant and require setting high expectations and potentially failing to e'er run across them. All the same, they are some of the most meaningful moments and activities of our lives. They involve pain, struggle, even anger and despair, yet once nosotros've done them we look back and become misty-eyed about them.

Why?

Because it's these sorts of activities that let us to become our platonic selves. It'southward the perpetual pursuit of fulfilling our ideal selves that grants us happiness, regardless of superficial pleasures or pain, regardless of positive or negative emotions. This is why some people are happy in state of war and others are sad at weddings. Information technology'south why some are excited to work and others hate parties. The traits they're inhabiting don't align with their ideal selves.

The finish results don't define our ideal selves. Information technology's not finishing the marathon that makes usa happy; it's achieving a hard long-term goal that does. Information technology's not having an awesome kid to testify off that makes us happy; it's knowing that you lot gave yourself up to the growth of another human existence that is special. Information technology'due south not the prestige and coin from the new business that makes y'all happy, it's the process of overcoming all odds with people you care about.

And this is the reason that trying to be happy inevitably volition make y'all unhappy. Because to try to exist happy implies that you are not already inhabiting your ideal self, you are not aligned with the qualities of who you wish to exist. Afterwards all, if you were acting out your ideal cocky, and so you wouldn't experience the need to attempt to exist happy.

Cue statements about "finding happiness within," and "knowing that you're enough." It's non that happiness itself is in you, it's that happiness occurs when you decide to pursue what's in you.

And this is why happiness is so fleeting. Anyone who has set out major life goals for themselves but to achieve them and realize that they experience the same relative amounts of happiness/unhappiness knows that happiness e'er feels like it'due south around the corner, just waiting for you to show up. No matter where yous are in life, you will e'er perceive there to be 1 more than thing you lot need to do to be especially happy7. But information technology too, volition exist a mirage.

And that'due south because our ideal self is always but around that corner, e'er three steps ahead of united states of america. We dream of being a musician and when we're a musician, we dream of writing a motion-picture show score, and when write a motion-picture show score, we dream of writing a screenplay. And what matters isn't that we achieve each of these plateaus of success, but that nosotros're consistently moving towards them, twenty-four hours after solar day, month after month, year later year. The plateaus will come and go, and we'll continue following our platonic cocky down the path of our lives.

The Key to Finding Happiness Map

And with that, with regards to finding happiness, it seems the best communication is also the simplest: Imagine who you desire to be and then stride towards it8. Dream big and and then do something. Anything9. The simple act of moving at all will change how yous feel near the entire procedure and serve to inspire you lot farther.

Allow become of the imagined result—it'southward non necessary. The fantasy and the dream are merely tools to go yous off your ass. It doesn't thing if they come true or not. Live, man. But live. Stop trying to be happy and simply be.