“The secret of the enjoyment of pleasure is to know when to stop.” – Alan Watts
What is happiness?
Yesterday, we crossed a few of the leading suspects off our list:
1. Pleasure (momentary good feeling stimulated by food, entertainment, sex, etc) — not happiness.
2. Lack of Suffering (yes, we can suffer and still be happy) — not happiness.
3. Material Success (duh) — not happiness.
So, what actually is happiness?
The answer is simpler than you might think:
Happiness is a measure of our default emotional state.
Key word = default:
Happiness is not the peaks (pleasure) or valleys (suffering) — it is our baseline; our emotional center of gravity; the state we spend most of our time in.
It is the macro, not the micro; the larger meta-context of our emotional experience.
That’s why an unhappy person can experience moments of joy, excitement, satisfaction, pick your favorite feeling — and still be, in a larger sense, “unhappy.”
It’s also why a happy person can experience pain, sadness, anger, stubbed toes, etc — and still be, in a larger sense, “happy.”
Happiness is the bar at which our larger emotional reality is set…
…And that bar moves up or down (to a shocking degree, in my experience) based on how we choose to live.
So over the next two days, we’re going to create a “master list” of behaviours that increase — and decrease — happiness.
In the meantime, here’s an experiment to play with:
Think back to time in your life you felt genuinely “happy” for an extended period of time.
What were you doing at that time?
Hit reply to let me know what you come up with.
The past leaves clues for those who care to look…
– T
P.S. Quick reminder:
Members of The Path will get access to a full-length session on happiness we’re recording at our retreat, this summer.
The retreat goes down in t-minus 4.5 weeks (holy sh*t that’s exciting), so the recording will be posted sometime after that.
P.P.S. Here’s where you can read (or re-read) the earlier parts of this series.
