Happiness Strategies | How to be Happy

Socrates* believed that only people with self-knowledge could find true happiness. According to Socrates:

• - Happiness flows not from physical or external conditions, such as bodily pleasures or wealth and power, but from living a life that’s right for your soul, your deepest good.
• - If you don’t know what’s good for your soul, then you’ll be misled into pursuing happiness based on what’s conventional [money?] or easy [escapism?]. This is a dead-end.
• - If you do know what’s good for your soul, then you’ll do it naturally, since it’s the nature of good to be desired. This is the path to happiness.

In other words, Socrates believed that to be happy you need to know what’s good for you.

Happiness strategies inspired by Socrates

Relationships: We’ve all felt the thrilling appeal of a bad boy/girl, but in our heart of hearts we know they’ll only make us miserable in the ‘ever after’ part of life.

Career: It’s tempting to take a job based on money, but you’ll get used to the money and adjust your expectations quickly. A job offering challenge, good colleagues and enjoyment may well be ‘better for you’ and therefore a happier choice.

Self-knowledge: A little self-reflection can help identify what’s good for you in your own life. By looking back at which decisions have brought you long-term happiness and which have eventually left you feeling regret, you can deepen your self-knowledge.

Generosity: Consider what you can do for others. Giving money, time or resources to help people in need could be wonderful for them - and for your own deepest good.

Socrates’ ideas about happiness can be powerful. Rather than fighting your instant-gratification desires, you might begin to see them as conventional and illusory. This doesn’t mean you’ll always say no to them. But you may develop a sense of what brings true happiness, giving you a more meaningful context for making choices.

Read more philosophers ‘On Happiness’.

*To learn more about Socrates, you might like to read The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our World View by Richard Tarnas.

“Each friend represents a world in us,
a world possibly not born until they arrive,
and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” - Anais Nin

Isn’t it wonderful how you inhabit a slightly different ‘world’ with each of your friends - witty with Alex, fun with Cletus, relaxed with Sal. It’s like there’s a theme of ‘you’, with a different variation for each friend’s influence.

You can see how these different selves are co-created by the people in a relationship.

Think of the guy who easily finishes tasks at work, but passive-aggressively avoids projects his wife nags him about. 

‘Why is it only the things I want you to do that never get done?’ she asks. Why indeed.

Or the girl who’s perfectly competent with her girlfriends but loses her keys or forgets where she parked the car when she’s with her critical boyfriend.

‘You’re useless - how do you cope when I’m not around?’ He’d be surprised.

Each of us has limited time and energy for friendship. But friends are so important that it’s wise to be careful how we spend our ‘friendship resources’. Think of the world you can create in another person - don’t squander that power.

• Spend more time with people who bring out your best
  You’ll feel happy and confident, and take the halo effect into your other relationships.
• Help bring out the best in others.
  By showing respect, being encouraging and offering a hand when needed, you’ll support your friends and help them to express their finest selves.
• Avoid friendships that sap your energy.
  Some people are determined to be miserable. If they’re not open to your help then you might want to put your friendship resources to better use.

By being more aware of the influence you and your friends have on one another, you can nurture friendships that create a wonderful world in both of you.

My friend Dave loves vinyl. He’s made small concessions toward CDs, but his true love has always been the turntable.

So it was something of a surprise to find out he’d won an iPod Nano. The little silver device had been confined to its box for months, bursting with unheard melodies, a tiny bud of unrealised musical delight.

Yesterday  I went over to Dave’s to help this small bundle of joy make the transition to life. First I checked that Dave’s broadband was adequately dilated; it was. Then I helped Dave get comfortable as the iTunes waters broke onto his computer. He was so excited as we searched for and purchased long-desired songs and organised them into playlists that I had to keep reminding him to breathe, Dave, breathe. At last it was time for Dave to push - the sync button. Songs rushed forth into the Nano, filling it with musical life.

‘Is everything all right?’ panted Dave, overcome with excitement and anxiety. I checked the screen - It was OK to disconnect.

‘It’s perfect’, I replied.’

I cut the USB cord and handed the little silver package to Dave. He cradled it, his face glowing as the screen came to life with album art. ‘It looks just like the vinyl’, he sniffed.

If you’ve ever doubted whether technology can bring happiness, I wish you could have seen the look on Dave’s face when I left him cooing over that Nano yesterday. It put a song in my heart.

This is the eighth of 10 tips for unwavering woe.

To weed happiness out of your life, there’s a herbicide you can trust - neuroticism. Nurturing your inner neurotic requires:

• an overwrought pre-occupation with the minutiae of your life
• an unflinching determination to exaggerate every miniscule worry
• a resolute dedication to wax miserable to anyone who will listen - and to do your best with those who won’t.

In this way, being neurotic doesn’t just promote your own misery, it radiates out to all who inadvertently get exposed to you - like a ripple in a cesspool.

You can start today to grow your neurotic sapling by using these little gems of manure.

1. Develop hypochondria

Hypochondria is wasted on genuine health concerns or legitimately worrying ailments. Its true magic works only on trivialities so trifling or nullities so non-existent as to be imperceptible to the untrained person (that is, the non-neurotic). Each affliction must be inflated to an Ebola-like peril, at which hands your final, rasping breath is surely imminent.

Practice with a headache. Assume no one else has ever had one (you can be sure they’ve never had one as bad as yours) and describe each symptom in graphic detail, making liberal use of words like phlegm, pustule and snot. It helps to be quietly dignified as you show you’ve made peace with the fact that the end is very, very nigh.

2. Voice every vexation 

If a sphincter tightens in an empty forest, does it make a sound? Of course not. Neuroticism requires others to share the suffering in order to give it meaning. This is why you must be vocally uptight about everything - leave no irritation unexpressed, no annoyance unmentioned, no inconvenience unbemoaned. Dedicate yourself to noticing and lamenting, noticing and lamenting. Complain loud, complain often.

3. Keep your strings high

Being highly strung keeps your many and varied agitations close to the surface, where they’re most useful in forestalling peace and contentment. Be prepared to tip into hysteria at the slightest provocation. Over-analyse everything people do and say. This makes those around you walk on eggshells, so they’ll be less inclined to cut you off mid-rant, lest they unleash the beast. Think retro and be uptight and outa sight (of happiness).

If you’re wondering whether these three pieces of compost would blend together into a nice medley of melancholy, then I’m right there with you. Here’s what I’m thinking.

You know the concept of the 30-second pitch, right? It’s a pithy summary of an idea that gets the basics across fast.

Well, this is just like that. Only not so much pithy; more pathetic. And for summary, think Paul Thomas Anderson film. Before the studio cuts. I call it the 30-minute bitch. Here’s how it works.

Say you’re walking down the street and you run into someone you haven’t see in a while. They smile, ask how you’ve been, and  before they can catch their breath - whammo!

Well, you know things haven’t been so good lately. I’ve developed a weird thing on my toe that oozes a lot of puss and it’s ruined all my socks and quite a few pairs of shoes too, but the doctor says it should clear up if I leave it alone but how can you do that when there’s all that blood and puss coming out all the time? Anyway I think it might be toe cancer, probably from the stress of Joey - you know he really loves netball but they’re very unpleasant about having him on the team, and I know he’s very big for his age and all, and he repeated third grade that time and also fourth, but he just loves the game and I don’t see why those girls find him so intimidating. Anyway it really worries me but boy do I know about that kind of thing because the people in my office can be so cruel about my hypo-hyper-pustulating-infarcted-chickenmcnugget-dypepsimax-trombonis and sometime I don’t know how I manage to go on…

Load your own conversations with your neurotic 30-minute bitch and you’ll be on the way to getting those pesky happiness buds out of your garden.

Before you know it, you’ll be talking fertiliser.

Other tips in this series of 10 tips for unwavering woe:

• Tip 1: Take offense
• Tip 2: Never take responsibility
• Tip 3: Pity yourself
• Tip 4: Be needy
• Tip 5: Be ungrateful
• Tip 6: Avoid reality
• Tip 7: Make happiness chase you
• Tip 9: Always be right
• Tip 10: Be perfect

I was cycling at the gym the other day when the guy on the next bike started chatting. (The etiquette of working out is a whole other topic on which I’d love to rant but, at least for now, won’t.) I removed an earbud, and he asked what I was listening to.

‘An audiobook’, I puffed.

‘You and your books!’ he said. ‘You’re always reading.’

How did he know I was always reading? I was stunned. I could have sworn I’d never seen the guy in my life. Suddenly I felt very visible. Could people at the gym see me, even with my head down under a cap and my mind lost in the current playlist/podcast/(audio)book? I’d always figured that since I didn’t notice them, they didn’t notice me.

It got me thinking about how we can make an impression on people, even when we don’t realise it.

Like the guy performing nasal excavation at the lights who thinks that because he’s in his car, we can’t see him.

Or the parent who laughs at some obnoxious comment by their 3-year-old, saying ‘I don’t know where she gets it from’. She gets it from you, dude; you talk like that. Just because you’re not talking to her doesn’t mean she’s not paying attention.

Or people who elbow and shove their way onto peak-hour trains as if it’s the running of the bulls and then demurely take their seats like they’re Emily Post. Do they think that avoiding eye contact renders them invisible to the naked eye?

People notice us - what we say, what we do, how we act when we think no-one’s looking. Without meaning to, we can be setting an example for kids, giving insights into who we are, even motivating others to copy us or be nothing like us.

One of my tricks for deciding what to do when I’m not too sure of myself is to imagine I’m on a reality TV show (it’s the only time I have such fantasies - honest!). How would I feel if my behaviour were public? Proud? Ashamed? Wishing I’d added a coat of lip-gloss? It’s a great way to work out who you want to be.

After the conversation with my bike-neighbour, I realised that people see us, no matter how oblivious we ourselves may be. Being on reality TV is a lot like real life. Except for the prizes.