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October 19, 2019
While happiness itself is sought for its own sake, every other goal—health, beauty, money, or power—is valued only because we expect that it will make us happy.
every other goal—health, beauty, money, or power—is valued only because we expect that it will make us happy.
Is this because it is the destiny of mankind to remain unfulfilled, each person always wanting more than he or she can have?
it is the destiny of mankind to remain unfulfilled, each person always wanting more than he or she can have?
What I “discovered” was that happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.
“Ask yourself whether you are happy,” said J. S. Mill, “and you cease to be so.” It is by being fully involved with every detail of our lives, whether good or bad, that we find happiness, not by trying to look for it directly.
“Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue . . . as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.”
achieving control over the contents of our consciousness.
Our perceptions about our lives are the outcome of many forces that shape experience,
optimal experience.
The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.
in the long run optimal experiences add up to a sense of mastery—or perhaps better, a sense of participation in determining the content of life—
flow—the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter;
optimal experience depends on the ability to control what happens in consciousness moment by moment,
Everything we experience—joy or pain, interest or boredom—is represented in the mind as information. If we are able to control this information, we can decide what our lives will be like.
contrary to the myths mankind has developed to reassure itself, the universe was not created to answer our needs.
chronic dissatisfaction is the second obstacle that stands in the way of contentment.
Only direct control of experience, the ability to derive moment-by-moment enjoyment from everything we do, can overcome the obstacles to fulfillment.
“The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly,” in the words of J. H. Holmes. “It is simply indifferent.”
“No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.”
Certainly we should keep on learning how to master the external environment, because our physical survival may depend on it. But such mastery is not going to add one jot to how good we as individuals feel, or reduce the chaos of the world as we experience it.
With affluence and power come escalating expectations, and as our level of wealth and comforts keeps increasing, the sense of well-being we hoped to achieve keeps receding into the distance.
there is no inherent problem in our desire to escalate our goals, as long as we enjoy the struggle along the way.
The problem arises when people are so fixated on what they want to achieve that they cease to derive pleasure from the present.
When that happens, they forfeit their chance ...
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One of the major functions of every culture has been to shield its members from chaos, to reassure them of their importance and ultimate success.
that they have a special dispensation that puts them on the fast track to the future. Without such trust in exclusive privileges, it would be difficult to face the odds of existence.
This cultural hubris, or overweening presumption about what we are entitled to from a universe that is basically insensitive to human needs, generally leads to trouble.
The unwarranted sense of security sooner or later results in a rude awakening.
When people start believing that progress is inevitable and life easy, they may quickly lose courage and determination in the f...
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As they realize that what they had believed in is not entirely true, they abandon faith in everyt...
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Deprived of the customary supports that cultural values had given them, they flounder in a mo...
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The roots of the discontent are internal, and each person must untangle them personally, with his or her own power.
The lack of inner order manifests itself in the subjective condition that some call ontological anxiety, or existential dread.
As people move through life, passing from the hopeful ignorance of youth into sobering adulthood, they sooner or later face an increasingly nagging question: “Is this all there is?” Childhood can be painful, adolescence confusing, but for most people, behind it all there is the expectation that after one grows up, things will get better. During the years of early adulthood the future still looks promising, the hope remains that one’s goals will be realized. But inevitably the bathroom mirror shows the first white hairs, and confirms the fact that those extra pounds are not about to leave;
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But if a person does take the time out to reflect, the disillusionment returns: after each success it becomes clearer that money, power, status, and possessions do not, by themselves, necessarily add one iota to the quality of life.
If we are learning to be more assertive, we might inadvertently alienate our friends.
if we devote too much time to cultivating new friends, we might threaten relationships with our
spouse and ...
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religions are only temporarily successful attempts to cope with the lack of meaning in life;
those who seek consolation in existing churches often pay for their peace of mind with a tacit agreement to ignore a great deal of what is known about the way the world works.
while humankind collectively has increased its material powers a thousandfold, it has not advanced very far in terms of improving the content of experience.
If values and institutions no longer provide as supportive a framework as they once did, each person must use whatever tools are available to carve out a meaningful, enjoyable life.
adult irrationality is often the result of childhood frustrations.
To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances.
This challenge is both easier and more difficult than it sounds: easier because the ability to do so is entirely within each person’s hands; difficult because it requires a discipline and perseverance that are relatively rare in any era, and perhaps especially in the present. And before all else, achieving control over experience requires a drastic change in attitude about what is important and what is not.
civilization is built on the repression of individual desires.
It is important to realize that seeking pleasure is a reflex response built into our genes for the preservation of the species, not for the purpose of our own personal advantage.
The pleasure we take in eating is an efficient way to ensure that the body will get the nourishment it needs. The pleasure of sexual intercourse is an equally practical method for the genes to program the body to reproduce and thereby to ensure the continuity of the genes.
As long as the attraction is a reflex based on purely physical reactions, the person’s own conscious plans probably play only a minimal role.
