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.

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

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.

Self-obsession is boring

Thinking of ourselves as alone in the world puts us into a delusion. The more we focus on how we feel, the worse we feel. Thurman quotes the Dalai Lama, who says our own pains and pleasures are too boring, too small a theatre for our intelligence.

We can move into compassion

We can move beyond this obsession with ourselves – through art, meditation, understanding, and becoming aware of our interconnectedness with others. Doing so forces us to feel what others feel, to experience compassion. When we’re no longer locked into ourselves, when we escape the prison of I-me-mine, then we start to become interested in others, and to feel our own selves differently.

Helping is more fun than being caught up in ourselves

To help the suffering we don’t have to join their pain or be miserable. Instead, we can be buoyed by a sense of hope, of what is possible through helping. Being compassionate and generous is fun. Again Thurman cites the Dalai Lama – who’s a great example of joy, despite how deeply he feels the pain of the world.

We can end our self-centered focus, thinking instead of how to help someone else – even a pet! – to be happy. And as soon as we make someone else happier, our whole perception broadens. Suddenly, we’re happier too.

My (&GBS’s) 2 cents

We don’t have to be Buddhist scholars to appreciate the value of focusing less on our own boring dramas and more on how we can contribute to our world. Indeed, the Irish-born, Nobel-Prize-winning writer George Bernard Shaw noted something similar more than a century ago:

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

This is the irony of compassion, the karmic trick of kindness. When we think about ourselves, those ailments and grievances loom large in our lives. It’s when we turn our attention to others that we somehow stumble onto the ‘true joy in life’.

Now before you get carried away picturing hedonistic orgies, I should clarify what he meant by pleasure. Although Epicurus and his followers were rumored to live a profligate lifestyle, and still today the word epicure suggests indulgent eating, drinking and merriment, in fact Epicurus advised the opposite of abandoning yourself to pleasures of the flesh.

Instead, like Socrates, he believed that rationally analyzing our initial pleasure-seeking impulses would reveal them to be false paths to happiness.

His own analysis of a pleasurable life yielded three essentials:

1. Friendship – who you eat with, matters more than what’s on your plate
2. Freedom – ‘from the prison of everyday affairs and politics’
3. Thought – because rational thinking keeps pointless anxiety at bay.

His lifestyle expressed his philosophy, with a simple commune-like home and meals of water and vegetables and, for a treat, a ‘pot of cheese’.

Epicurus believed you could be happy with friends, freedom and thought, even without wealth; but wealth without the big three couldn’t make you happy.

Happiness strategies inspired by Epicurus

Friendship: Friends contribute to our sense of identity, support us in trouble and help celebrate good times. Many people think success without love would be empty, yet neglect to nurture their friendships or think proactively about who they value as friends. Making friendship a life priority can help protect the precious attachments that contribute so much to our happiness.

Freedom: It’s hard to avoid pressure and expectations when running the rate race. But we can choose to sacrifice some modern conveniences for greater freedom. We can work shorter hours, live somewhere less salubrious, forego the latest gadgets, make a simpler life for ourselves. We may give up status or money but gain a freer, more independent, happier life.

Thought: It takes effort and courage to question conventional wisdom and cultural expectations. But doing the hard thinking about what brings us happiness can finally put us in touch with genuine sources of joy, rather than the things we think should bring us joy. The obvious pleasures are rarely the heartfelt, lasting ones.

Wealth: Having money can bring many wonderful things and can certainly contribute to happiness. It’s what else we have – or don’t have – in our lives that can make all the difference to how happy our money makes us.

Epicurus’s ideas about happiness are surprising – both encouraging us to pursue pleasure but also warning us to think long and hard about what that pleasure means. Nurturing friendship, freeing ourselves from some of the shackles of life and thinking critically about life and happiness can help us find a happier way to live.

Read more philosophers ‘On Happiness’.

*To learn more about Epicurus you might like to read The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton.

In it she shares some wonderful wisdom that might be equally applicable to living ‘The Happy Life’:

Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now… Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water… Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

Although Dillard is talking about writing, I think her notion of holding nothing back applies to happiness too.

If we wait for something – a relationship, job, opportunity, situation – before we express our best self, or do what we love, or choose to be happy, then we might be wasting who we are now. We don’t have to save up our happiness till the circumstances are just right. We’ll be different people later, and the resources we’ll draw on then will have been replenished ‘from beneath’, by the intervening time, thought and experiences.

Perhaps Dillard’s advice can free us to trust that ’something more’ will be there for tomorrow, and to let today be as happy as we can make it.

Perhaps her words can inspire us to choose happiness right now, and spare ourselves a safe filled with ashes.

Her friend calmly replied, ‘Nora, we can’t do everything’.

This was a revelation to Nora – she felt as if she’d ‘been given the secret of life’.

And its a wonderful reminder for those of us who think we can, or should, fix everything in the world around us. Trying to do everything can be terribly frustrating, both for us and for the unsuspecting victims of our efforts.

We simply cannot do everything. Sometimes it’s better to just sit back and enjoy the movie.

So for instance, we should aim for:

• -Neither shame nor hubris, but healthy self-respect
• -Neither punishing self-discipline nor laziness, but concerted effort
• -Neither asceticism nor overindulgence, but moderation.

Aristotle disagreed with Socrates, who thought knowing what was right automatically leads to doing right. For Aristotle, you can know what you should do and still not do it.

More important than individual actions is how you live your life as a whole. Being on a virtuous path – one of balance and moderation – is the way to long-term happiness. 

Happiness strategies inspired by Aristotle

Being good: You can develop virtues, or personal strengths, by choosing a balanced approach. Take the example of getting fit. Some people join a gym, work out like maniacs till they get injured or can’t face another grueling workout, and then hang up their lycra for life. Consider adopting a more sustainable regime – and sticking to it.

Lifestyle: You can work excessive hours, earn an enormous income, and be wastefully extravagant. But you’re more like to find happiness by working, earning and spending a little less.

Pride: Are you incapable of saying or hearing a good thing about yourself? Or is there an unending stream of air from your lips to your trumpet? Aim for self-respect instead. A good way to respect yourself more is to do those old-fashioned, decent things – like being considerate of others when you use your mobile, throwing litter in bins, giving your best at work and being liberal with please, thank you and sorry.

We can get caught up in extremes - eating a cabbage soup diet all week and then finishing an entire box of Krispy Kremes; watching daily re-runs of Law & Order and then staying up all night to meet a deadline; regularly snapping at a loved one and then overpowering them with affection when they threaten to leave.

Instead, consider Aristotle’s encouragement to cultivate virtues and aim for balance. It’s a great way to put the happy into happy medium.

Read more philosophers ‘On Happiness’.

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

Although this may seem a gloomy perspective, it’s actually rather liberating. Once we stop expecting the world to show us a good time, we’re freed from the inevitable disappointment when it neglects to do so. Perhaps we’re less bitter when love lets us down, less devastated when we fail.

In other words, Schopenhauer believed that assuming the world is there to make you happy can be a source of heartache and disappointment.

Happiness strategies inspired by Schopenhauer

Pursuing happiness: 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.

Expectations: Perhaps the most helpful idea for our happiness is to accept the inevitability of disappointment. By setting our heart on outcomes with the understanding that some things will go our way and some won’t, we may find ourselves more pleased when things go well and less distressed when they don’t.

Meaning: Meaning may not be inherent in the world, but we can invest our lives with purpose. Our sense of purpose could come from anything that has meaning for us – including religious faith, our relationships, raising children, creating something that outlasts us, contributing to human knowledge or helping others.

Relationships: Being in a relationship purely because it ‘makes you happy’ may leave you more vulnerable to disappointment than one in which you also share common values or one in which you can make yourself happy.

Schopenhauer’s ideas about happiness are confronting, but ultimately freeing. Instead of clinging to the hope that happiness is your right, you can choose to be more active in finding meaning and happiness in what can sometimes be a disappointing world.

Read more philosophers ‘On Happiness’.

*To learn more about Schopenhauer you might like to read The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton.

• - 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.

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.