Happiness Strategies | How to be Happy

In this 12-minute TED talk, Buddhist scholar Bob Thurman shares simple yet profound insights about happiness. If you don’t want to watch the video (don’t worry - you won’t miss any how-to-be-happy demonstrations), then here’s a summary:

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’.

In stark contrast to the contemporaneous Stoics - for whom a virtuous soul was the key to happiness - Epicurus* believed ‘pleasure is the beginning and the goal of a happy 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.

Annie Dillard wrote a classic book on the experience of being a writer, called The Writing Life.

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.

Nora Ephron has a wonderful book of essays called I feel bad about my neck. In The story of my life in 3,500 words or less she talks about the time she sat with a friend in a small movie screening room. It became so overfilled that people were asked to share seats. Vexed by this, she turned to her friend and observed that someone should set up folding chairs in the aisles.

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.

Aristotle* believed the aim of life is to be happy. But there’s a catch - to be happy, you have to be good. Fortunately, Aristotle wasn’t asking for perfect virtue. Instead he recommended a happy medium between opposites, believing neither extreme to be ideal.

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.