Happiness Strategies | How to be Happy

I’ve just released a little eBook called

How to be Wise & Happy
Happiness strategies inspired by
history’s wisest philosophers

How to be Wise & Happy looks at the happiness philosophies of 5 great philosophers and uses that wisdom to suggest modern-day strategies for happiness. Plus there’s a bonus section containing happiness insights from 4 modern wise women.

You get your FREE copy when you subscribe to the weekly newsletter – you can sign up now using the form at the top-right.

If you’re already a newsletter subscriber you won’t miss out – I’ll be sending you the link with the next Happiness Strategies Weekly Update.

Here are a few of the philosopher-inspired happiness strategies.

Inspired by the philosophy of Epicurus -

Many people think success without love would be empty, yet neglect to nurture their friendships or think pro-actively about who they value as friends. Making friendship a life priority can help protect the precious attachments that contribute so much to our happiness.

Inspired by the philosophy of Socrates -

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.

Inspired by the philosophy of Schopenhauer -

If we accept that happiness is not automatic, then it puts the onus on us to find and create happiness for ourselves. We can take a more active approach to designing a pleasing life for ourselves.

William James, considered by many to be the father of psychology, said:

To give up pretensions
is as blessed a relief as to get them gratified.

This is wonderful wisdom for a happier life. For most of us, there are things about ourselves that we might like to be true, that we might struggle to make true, but that we know in our hearts to be more or less bollocks. And as long as we cling to them, happiness is hard to find.

One such pretension for me is that I’m academic. Last year after finishing a Bachelor of Psychology I was offered a PhD scholarship. I agonised over whether to take it, whether I had the right stuff to be a scholar.

One of my concerns was that I’d spent much of the year watching favourite TV shows, reading books about serial killers, eating junk food, rearranging my playlists, surfing the net, sticking post-its on key pages of fashion magazines and making up very lame jokes with my husband (eg
Q: What does a grammarian get after having a colectomy?
A: A semi-colon).

My friend Sally* spent her time (a) studying and (b) berating me for my inane tastes.

(This became a fun diversion: on seeing her coming, I’d hide Advanced Concepts in Cognition and Perception and start reading Cosmo, bringing forth a vitriolic diatribe of condemnation. What larks! I’d defend myself by quoting that great sage, Homer J. Simpson: Sally, please! I enjoy all the meats of our cultural stew.)

Now it’s not that being an academic and having my interests are mutually exclusive – although let’s face it: leather elbow patches and tweed don’t easily match denim minis, skinny jeans and faux-fur puffa jackets. Rather, it’s a question of what comes from inside out and what comes from outside in.

While pondering the PhD, I realised that for people like Sally esoteric trumps entertaining every time. They’re not doing it to be fancy, it’s who they are. This was liberating, allowing me to embrace my inner bimbo and release my pretensions:

• I’d rather de-clutter my wardrobe than decipher Wernicke’s encephalopathy
• I’m more gifted at lip-synching to Abba at the gym than liberating the secrets of personality disorders in the lab.
• I’m not the person carping about the crap on TV at dinner parties – I’m the one late to the dinner party because I had to set the video for Californication, The L Word and Chaser’s War on Everything.

I decided against the PhD. Instead, I’ve spent this year doing a life coaching course and starting to turn my happiness thesis into a self-help book. I wish things were moving faster but at least I feel they’re moving in the right direction – for me.

And WJ was right – it is a blessed relief.

*Not her real name

Albert Schweitzer – humanitarian, prolific author and Nobel Peace Prize winner – said:

Success is not the key to happiness.
Happiness is the key to success.
If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

If you find that hard to believe, you might like to take a(nother) look at 101 Happiness Strategies: How to be happy – 4. Be happy now.

In that happiness strategy we saw how, across a range of life areas like relationships, work and health, being happy:

- accompanies success
- precedes success
- and even seems to cause success.

So don’t put off happiness till you achieve your dreams. Be happy today and boost your chances of being successful at the things you desire.

Technorati Tags: Happiness,success,Albert Schweitzer,happiness strategies

Eve Ensler created Vagina Monologues after interviewing more than 200 women about their bodies. Its worldwide success helped her establish V-Day, a movement fighting violence against females that has raised more than $35 million for campaigns and direct action.

Here’s what Ensler has to say about happiness:

Happiness exists in action.
It exists in telling the truth and saying what your truth is.
And it exists in giving away what you want the most.

By giving to others what we seek for ourselves, ‘we heal the broken part inside each of us’.

Source of quotes: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/64

Technorati Tags: Happiness,Eve Ensler,On happiness,How to be happy

Nietzsche* wasn’t exactly a model of lightheartedness.

He eventually succumbed to incapacitating mental illness, which some believe to have been part-inspired by his radical philosophies and relentless questioning of ‘truth’.

Even so, he had some profound things to say about being happy.

- He famously proclaimed ‘the death of God’. But rather than face a meaningless, faithless existence he proposed a life-affirming embrace of the here and now by a sheer effort of will and imagination.

-  He believed there are no facts, ‘only interpretations’.

- He disagreed with Mill’s Utilitarianism, where, to be happy, you do what gives pleasure and avoid what causes pain. By contrast, Nietzsche thought happiness was more hard won, sometimes needing us to suffer for our sense of fulfillment – as with creating art, for example.

Happiness strategies inspired by Nietzsche

Meaning: Nietzsche’s ideas are radical, confronting and not for everyone. But if we choose to, we can each in our small way create a life story in which we are the hero. We can work on our character and our choices to transcend limiting expectations and beliefs, and rise above the apparent chaos and meaninglessness of life.

Interpretation: There are innumerable perspectives for viewing the world – and no consensus on the right one. So we might as well choose to see things in a way that helps us to be happy – to recognize kindness in people, joy in small things, and a bright outcome in even the crappiest situation. A darker outlook is no more ‘true’.

Suffering: A little pain is a small price to pay for a more fulfilling, happy life. Whether it means the effort of study for a better job, sacrificing a holiday today for a home tomorrow, or exercising to enjoy a longer, more comfortable life, we can open ourselves to a bigger, more complex picture of pleasure and happiness.

Nietzsche’s post-modern, existential take on life can at times seem bleak. But at heart it’s life affirming – a call to each of us to see the world, our pain and our place in the universe in a proactive and heroic way. And in this way, to find our own happiness.

Read more philosophers ‘On Happiness’.

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