Training Your Brain to Be (and Stay) Happy
diurnal.st
diurnal.st
Regarding happiness, many yoga traditions would suggest that attachment to outcomes is a major root cause of suffering. Dedicated work without attachment to outcomes is suggested to free oneself from these binds of suffering. In particular, it's stressed that even attachment to positive outcomes will lead to suffering.
This, in additional to renunciation of baser desires, yoga (which I'll define here as exercise and some meditation), and finally surrender to "god" or "love" or the true self.
You are not your mind and you are not your body. Realizing this, and learning to identify with the true self, and to subdue the ego, are the keys to happiness in the yogic tradition. When this happens, your happiness is less and less affected by the outside world; the yogi learns to smile through adversity and keep a level head through triumph.
I imagine in the near future, hackers here and elsewhere will recognize yoga as a method to "hack" ones own tendencies, emotions, health, cognition, etc. I highly recommend it as a gesture towards happiness; I've found it to be both practical and practicable for the most part.
OK, but what if you don't have anything positive going on in your life right now? What if you don't have close friends, a romantic partner, a good job, or a secure home? What if you don't have a happy memories? Perhaps you had abusive parents, or you were bullied, or you suffered a debilitating illness?
Convincing middle-class college students to be a bit more cheerful by focussing on the myriad things they have to be grateful for isn't the challenge. It's helping people who have had the worst misfortune find some kind of peace.
These are more formally known as "discharge messages", which is part of "safe wards".
Here's one version, but there are very many: http://www.dorsethealthcare.nhs.uk/WS-Dorset-HealthCare/Down...
http://www.safewards.net/interventions/discharge-message
Currently in England you have to be very severely ill to get admitted to a ward.
"Why do I still feel this way even though I have things to be grateful for!"
I think reminding yourself to be grateful for things is important, but should be separated from trying to find happiness.
Example: I am grateful to have a job, food on my table and a house. That doesn't invalidate my feelings of annoyance with my friend who I had a fight with this morning though.
Hmm... I think if you are finding things to be grateful for, you really are on your way to happiness. Maybe really, the search for happiness is actually the problem. I don't know what your search for happiness looks like, I know what mine looks like. I imagine that i will be happy when X happens, or when life event Y or Z happens. Of course, it may be that none of X, Y, or Z happens, ever. Does that mean I can't be happy in my current or future circumstances? Nope.
I will also put it out there and say that comparing our lives to others on facebook or instagram, etc. is a recipe for disaster. Maybe their lives really are better than ours, maybe they are not. What we see there is a "photoshopped" version of their life, and that creates dissatisfaction with our own lives.
Put simply, I'm trying to both "have goals for the future, but be satisfied in today".
You can't always control the world around you, but you can control how you choose to react to it. Tony Robbins is one of my favorite motivational speakers, and he was abused by his mother as a child. It was really bad. It astounds me to hear him talk about it though, he sees the silver lining of it and says, "It sucked. It did. But it taught me to be resourceful. And that's now one of my greatest strengths." (paraphrasing a bit)
That's not to say you'll be grinning like a shark every moment of every day. People have bad days and mixed emotions. But overall you can make your general happiness much higher by choice.
I grew up in 3rd world poverty. Sorry but this gross misrepresentation of how things are. Life is unbearable suffering, I won't go into the details here. I think this it is some sort of western fantasy that people with less are somehow more noble, happier, altruistic ect.
The human mind is the same everywhere from the poor uneducated in an Indian slum to a billionaire in Hollywood. Our basic nature is shared among all of the humanity.
Don't get me wrong, there were people who were just sad all the time too, and understandably so. But life there was crappy and yet there were still people trying to make the best of the cards that were dealt to them. Like you said peoples minds are similar everywhere, the ability to find happiness in small things can be found everywhere too.
It's not direct but this line of reasoning is getting pretty close to relative privation. Peoples' suffering in the US isn't necessarily less valid because they generally have the basics covered (though not universally), and it sounds a little bit like invalidating their pain to say that you're not allowed to be unhappy if "one bad thing happens to you."
Additionally the original post is wrong about money, it does tend to make people happier up until $100k, where it starts plateauing.
I'm not trying to invalidate anyone's pain. I'm saying it's a mindset thing to think you can never ever be happy or be grateful because bad things have happened/are happening. I can be grateful for something while simultaneously experiencing pain. I'm grateful for the good meal I had for lunch, but I also sprained my ankle on the way back. One thing does not invalidate the other.
Agree with you about the money thing, I've seen a few studies saying that very thing.
"Noble savage" much?
"Sister, since I was born in the noble birth, I do not recall intentionally
killing a living being. Through this may there be wellbeing for you,
wellbeing for your fetus." And there was wellbeing for the woman, wellbeing
for her fetus.
Then Ven. Angulimala, dwelling alone, secluded, heedful, ardent, & resolute,
in no long time reached & remained in the supreme goal of the holy life for
which clansmen rightly go forth from home into homelessness, knowing &
realizing it for himself in the here & now. He knew: "Birth is ended, the
holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for the sake of
this world." And thus Ven. Angulimala became another one of the arahants.
Ven. Angulimala — his head broken open and dripping with blood, his bowl
broken, and his outer robe ripped to shreds — went to the Blessed One. The
Blessed One saw him coming from afar and on seeing him said to him: "Bear
with it, brahman! Bear with it! The fruit of the kamma that would have
burned you in hell for many years, many hundreds of years, many thousands of
years, you are now experiencing in the here-&-now!"
Then Ven. Angulimala, having gone alone into seclusion, experienced the
bliss of release.
[0] http://www.dhammatalks.org/ebook_index.html#Merit
[1] http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.086.than.html
[2] http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/an03.099.tha...
I have to approach this from the perspective of a Christian, because I am one.
Everyone is going to have tips and tricks that they use for improving their mental state. It could be as simple as "think positive" or it could be drugs or therapy. These all work, to an extent. But there's really only one way to deal with the problem once and for all and that's what Jesus did 2000 years ago.
I'll be clear, trying to have faith and trying to turn away from sin is not guaranteed to make you happy. But, as I said up top, that's not the goal. What God offers is peace, which is what I know a lot of people are looking for. An assurance that there's some larger meaning to the world we live in.
> What God offers is peace, which is what I know a lot of people are looking for
Not only do I think you are wrong on the former count, I don't think this is the appropriate forum for the latter - but I'll let the mods decide about that.
On the former, there's nothing to say but "you're wrong". Sure we die, but then we don't care. Happiness is it's own reward. Existing, living, breathing, loving, creating, thinking - these all cohabitate uniquely in humans. To say other things don't matter is to say life itself isn't worth living. If the peace only comes in death, then why not end it now?
> Then what was it all for, if you spent time trying to be happy?
"What was it all for, if you spent all that time waiting for peace in the afterlife?"
I would hope they decide in my favor since there seem to be other people offering their own brand of semi-spiritual advice.
> Happiness is it's own reward.
I don't deny that at all! I love happiness. I try to do things that make me happy every day. What I said is that simply searching for happiness will always leave you disappointed.
> "What was it all for, if you spent all that time waiting for peace in the afterlife?"
As I said before, that wasn't my point. So many people have terrible things in their lives, as the OP said. It's nearly impossible for some people to find happiness, and if they do, it'll end someday, when they die or when they hit hard times again.
I would suspect that most people, if they've thought about it long enough, have realized that true lasting peace, if it exists, must exist outside of this life. I'm just trying to point out that that's true.
I respect that you've stated this is your perspective as a Christian. However, I think most people on this community are coming from a perspective of empiricism. I'm not a die-hard empiricist in general, but when I'm posting on Hacker News, i try my very best to stay within the lines of that tradition.
Within that scope, would you find value in being able to cite empirical research supporting your assertion that religious faith is the "only" valid method of being happy? Not to mention, exactly one religion? Does your religious belief grant you more happiness than a devout Hindu or Muslim? How do you measure it? Also, considering "unhappiness" to be a "problem" which you've "solved", does that mean you are never unhappy?
I don't mean these questions to be demeaning. I have actually been in very deep depressive episodes where at some points, I decided that I would have loved to get deep into some religion and just turned on whatever solace those folks seem to get. But it was impossible - the contradictions are so glaring that I continue to not really understand how people who otherwise have very good problem solving and logic skills can be absorbed into such religions. This is all given that I also had experience with the so-called "mind control cult" phenomenon, that you'd see in a group like Scientology or the Moonies - in those scenarios, you develop an emotional block that prevents you from applying any critical thinking to the religious doctrine in question. Everyone is supposedly susceptible to some form of mind-control-based disabling of critical thinking. I can only assume that we all are regularly slipping into small forms of whatever critical-thinking pits we are susceptible towards - even super rationalists...but I lack the intellect to prove it :) (perhaps this is my personal critical thinking pit).
Systematic theology applies critical thought, and yes, even empiricism to the study of scripture. I would recommend R.C Sproul's "Foundations" lecture series to anyone who is interested in the subject.
No, I don't consider unhappiness to be a problem to be solved, or that anyone can solve such a problem. That's the opposite of what I said actually.
Then remember that lots of people can't walk, lots of people have major issues breathing, lots of people can't see and/or hear, lots of people live in a bombed out warzone w/ no such bucolic parks to walk in. A lot of people are suffering in ways that you are not. When you don't have a job or a girlfriend or friends (certainly a place I've clocked many many years within), this is what "worked" for me. It of course didn't work amazingly but was better than not doing it. The theory is there's always something you can do/experience that you can try to feel good about. People in severe health / war /etc situations will have much more difficulty being happy. But no job/friends/partner, it can be a lot worse. Plus, exercise. I got tons more exercise when i was unemployed and single. nothing but time. I actually cant get good tracts of time to exercise now. grass is always greener etc.
"But what about those individuals who clearly aren't living the dream? What about a homeless person, for example? The important thing to realize is that Stoicism is by no means a rich person's philosophy. Those who enjoy a comfortable and affluent life can benefit from the practice of Stoicism, but so can those who are impoverished. In particular, although their poverty will prevent them from doing many things, it will not preclude them from practicing negative visualization.
Consider the person who has been reduced to possession of only a loincloth. His circumstances could be worse: He could lose the loincloth. He would do well, say the Stoics, to reflect on this possibility. Suppose, then, that he loses his loincloth. As long as he retains his health, his circumstances could again be worse--a point worth considering. And if his health deteriorates? He can be thankful that he is still alive."
The quote is from "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy" a great book: https://books.google.com/books?id=T9rQCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA72&lpg=P...
Don't expect to always be happy. Accept that sometimes life can be really, really hard and seemingly unfair. I think being able to handle times where our own minds/emotions seemingly turn against us is one of the most valuable skills in finding more happiness in life.
It's really hard work, but sometimes it's just ok to feel shitty. Observe this feeling, recognize that it's very normal on the spectrum of human emotion, and remind yourself that it's not permanent, even if it feels that way in the moment.
Why is happiness everything? If you just want to 'feel good', you could start a heroin habit; you will FEEL great. But is that a satisfying and full life?
I know for me personally, I might have been happier 'in the moment' five years ago, when I lived alone and got to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I played a lot of video games, did fun projects whenever I wanted, and had a lot of spending money from a good job. I know for me, I am never 'happier' in the moment than I am when playing video games.
Even though I can't do that as much anymore, I feel much more satisfied and content with my life now than I did then. Now, I am married with a kid, and my life is way harder, more stressful, and less focused on my own happiness. However, I am way more satisfied in my life, I feel more whole, and I feel a sense of purpose that I didn't have before. Of course, I would also say I am happy, but not in that same way I was when everything I did was what I wanted to do for me.
Happiness is just one part of a full life.
I don't know, but I would facetiously guess that yes, it probably feels like it is. Until you stop being able to afford more heroin, at which point no, it absolutely would not. Kind of like driving fast; it isn't the speed that kills you, it's the sudden stop.
Happiness and meaning probably look like different things to different people, though. Some people find fulfillment in offspring, sure. But I don't see how that's any different from anything else that works to assuage someone's existential malaise.
The key to being happier is to make it part of your daily routine until it becomes habit.
There is a good book called "minihabits" which explores this idea.
It has really helped me.
I wrote a calendar app to track my progress and motivate me not to break the chain. http://positivehabits.neillyons.io
One of my daily habits is to "Write down one positive affirmation per day".
I think it actually works. You are strengthening the connections between nerons which see positivity. You start to see more positive things in the world. (I don't know if this science is true. Just my thoughts on the matter)
i also do about half of the list in the article. perhaps there are just different preferences...
I learned that in these situations that if basic human needs are not being met, it is very hard for someone to experience "happiness". Two things I observed:
- Happiness and peace are not the same thing. Many of the good people I talked to would not claim any measure of happiness. But many had hope that tomorrow would be better, and gratitude for what they did have (which most often revolved around their relationships with others). This brought an element of "peace" that perhaps the future would be better than the present in spite of very difficult circumstances.
- At that time in my life, my own resources were quite limited but I had no worry that I would go hungry or cold. I didn't have a mountain of money, truckloads of food or all the answers. But I could see that my efforts to show sincere concern for people, to be a friend with a soft shoulder, to help with basic necessities as I was able, etc. helped these individuals increase their own hope, gratitude and peace. And that brought me tremendous happiness.
I'm not in a great position to tell someone else what to do to be happy. But I can assert from my own experience that I receive much happiness when I step out of myself and involve myself in things that help lighten the load of others.
I've also tried to distinguish between "pleasure" and "happiness". I think most of us have seen examples of people that have lives full of pleasure but devoid of happiness, and yet we still believe that our own happiness is the sum of self-directed pleasure. It seems to me that pleasure can contribute to happiness, but the foundation of happiness must be something more substantial.
If I think of the people I know who are happy and unhappy, money isn't a great correlation factor, and I know people are borderline homeless through to millionaires - I know happy/unhappy people across capital worth and income spectrum.
A better correlation for happiness is attitude and gratitude and enjoying the small things - the very things the article references.
Train your mind in an attitude of equanimity toward all phenomenae.
Much more practical than trying to sustain a specific phenomenon (happiness) in a constantly changing environment.