Solve For Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy

by Mo Gawdat

It’s the thought, not the actual event, that’s making you unhappy.

If events remain as they are, but changing the way we think about them changes our experience of them, could we become happy simply by changing our thoughts?

If fun suspends your thoughts, and happiness arises when your brain agrees with the events of your life, then joy is when thoughts are no longer even needed because the analysis has ended, and the equation has permanently been solved.

So the easiest way to become happy is to just be happy. Remove the unhappy thought, replace it with a happy one, and let the rest take care of itself.

So much of your happiness depends not on the conditions of the world around you but on the thoughts you create about them. When you learn to calmly observe the dialogue and the drama, you begin to see the ones and zeros. You can watch your thoughts, knowing that the only power they can gain over you is the power you grant them.

And our ancestors didn’t begrudge the discomfort those features caused them because they navigated an extremely hostile environment. For them, it made sense to assume the worst because the worst frequently happened.

We’re not as rational as we think. Our perception of the truth is often distracted by our irrational emotions.

When I find it hard to prove for or against a specific view, I choose to believe in the side that makes me happy. Choosing the side that makes me suffer with no evidence to prove my view is, well, not a very smart thing to do.

When nothing is certain—and nothing ever is—choose to be happy.

What you just said made me feel bad about myself, and I don’t like being around people who make me feel bad, so, don’t do it again.