What will make you happy?

[A_C_Slater]

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I have chased women, booze, drugs, and money. Everything but fame. None of it has any lasting meaning. None of it can make me happy. I have decided that Buddha was correct, that the only way to eradicate the endless suffering is to leave the cycle of craving, aversion and ignorance. To stop chasing. To stop hating. To understand the nature of reality and live in the ever-present moment. This is not an easy thing to do to say the least, but I don't see any other way out for me.

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As long as you continue to view yourself as the righteous and romanticized "Philospher God-King" it ain't gonna happen.

[amplify]

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As long as you continue to view yourself as the righteous and romanticized "Philospher God-King" it ain't gonna happen.

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Being Eternal Unknowable Mesmerizing balances it out tho.

[johnnycakes]

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You can never know what will make you truly happy.

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Daniel Gilbert agrees with you.
Saw him on the Colbert report about a month ago.
He's a professor of psychology at Harvard.
Here he is giving a 22 minute lecture about happiness.

[hoyasnaxa]

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It was more 'if you are single, will you ever be as happy as you could be?'

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I completely disagree with this, and just from browsing other replies it sounds like most people really do feel the way that you said here. I would say it is not more or less "happy", it is just different. I am 22, have a serious gf of a long time (4-7 years, no exact date), but in this relationship I have learned that thinking that she should make me happier, or being with someone that you want to be with should make you happier than if you are single is a very negative and dangerous thing to think. It is just different. I think this is the kind of thinking that makes people go crazy, feel bad about relationships in general, and doubt themselves and the person they are with.

A little hint that has helped me is really paying attention to knowledge or phrases that have been around for a very long time, because you take these for granted and can be really helpful.

[msEvsiNdreAd]

Coming from a guy who considered suicide on more than one occasion - my 2 cents on coming to terms and feeling better:

Three important factors that affect how you feel are diet, exercise, and sleep. If you want to feel your best, take care of your crap!

Other than that - real happiness doesn't come about by letting the everyday events of life dictate how you feel. If your let your life be dictated by whether or not you get the job, the girl, the house, you'll always want more, and you'll always be on a rollercoaster. There will be ups and there will be downs - without sad there is no happy - come to peace with that. I'm done taking things for granted - I'm pretty happy just sitting here eating some food that tastes good while browsing a forum and hearing your ideas - I can hear animals outside and the breeze is coming through my window -I mean that's pretty cool!.. I could not even exist! Clear your mind of the b/s and step into the present... this is a gift, the rest is just a game ^^.

[teddyFBI]

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Here's some food for thought: I realize now that when I was under 25, I often confused having fun with happiness.

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I'd like you to expand on this, because while others are heralding this as a major insight...well...I just don't *get* this, because for me "having fun" = happiness. When I'm having a great time, I'd tell you that I'm very happy, whereas when I'm not having fun...well, that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm not happy, but it correlates pretty well. e.g. I might be on a long phone conversation with someone I don't particularly like, but if u asked me in the middle of it whether I was generally happy at that point in life, I'd still say yes (if I was).

I guess what I'm saying is that your quote above suggests that you see very little correlation between having fun and happiness, whereas for me, while it may not be a 1:1 correlation, they still feel highly correlated.

[amplify]

[ QUOTE ]
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You can never know what will make you truly happy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Daniel Gilbert agrees with you.
Saw him on the Colbert report about a month ago.
He's a professor of psychology at Harvard.
Here he is giving a 22 minute lecture about happiness.

[/ QUOTE ]
This lecture is brilliant, thanks.

[smurfitup]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

You can never know what will make you truly happy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Daniel Gilbert agrees with you.
Saw him on the Colbert report about a month ago.
He's a professor of psychology at Harvard.
Here he is giving a 22 minute lecture about happiness.

[/ QUOTE ]

yeah, you should read his book "Stumbling on Happiness". It's terrific. Basically about how ineffective humans are at understanding how future events will affect their happiness.

[MaxPower]

The notion that marrying the perfect girl is going to make you happy is silly. While is is true that married people are generally happier than non-married people on average, this doesn't mean that a relationship will make an unhappy person happy. It will just make him slightly less unhappy in the long run and happy in the short term, until the novelty wears off.

There is no one event or thing that will turn you happy. Put out of your mind the idea that once you have accomplished some thing, you will then be happy. It doesn't work that way. If you can't be happy no as a young man, something is wrong.

[jeffnc]

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In fact, you can choose any state of "being", at any time. You can choose to be happy, sad, joyful, excited, depressed, anything you want, whenever you want it, it doesn't matter what actually happens in your life. We all do this every day, but most of us are doing this subconsciously. One example of this in todays society is movies and tv in general. If you watch a sad movie, suddenly you start to feel sad, even though nothing in your life is actually happening. You know it's all fake, just actors acting out a show for you, but still your state of being is changing.

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Actually that disproves your point. "If you watch a sad movie, suddenly you start to feel sad." In other words, external events affect your mood.