The True Key to Happiness

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Recently I stumbled upon an interesting article whose title was something to the effects of “The True Key to Happiness.” I can’t find the exact article cause it’s buried under the hundreds of other articles I have saved on Pocket and I don’t feel like looking, but it went something like this.

(Also, it goes without saying, and I cannot stress this enough, but the ideas expressed in this are not mine but from the article that I read.)

The author based the article off of Stoic Philosophy. In essence, the core idea to happiness was “instead of focusing on the event, focus on your belief.” I.e., what prevents you from being happy is not the event in and of itself, but rather your beliefs surrounding said event.

To further delve into the idea, the author gave the following example;

Imagine that you just got dumped by your S/O of five years.

Do you feel sad or depressed? “Yeah, my life is over.”

Now imagine the same scenario, but then you find out that they were a serial killer who killed their last three partners.

Still feel sad? Probably not, but on the off chance that you do feel sad, you should seriously consider going to see a shrink.

In any case, what changed there? It obviously wasn’t the event, it was your beliefs.

If you get fired from a job and believe that it was bad, and believe that you can get a better job easily, you’re set. But, if you believe it was the best thing that ever happened to you, and also believe that you won’t get a job better than this, then you’ve kinda like, as DJ Khaled would put it, played yourself.

There are no good or bad events, just your perception of them. The article also mentioned something about Shakespeare, - nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it as such (I think? Not sure, but it was something like that).

The author then went on to state, next time, you are upset about something, ponder your beliefs regarding it, and ask yourself if they are rational.

Common irrational thoughts that are probably applicable to many people here are;

• I got dumped, my life is over, I loved them so much, I'll never get over it.
• I didn't get into the school program I wanted, I won't ever recover from this.
• I got such a bad mark on this one test, my entire future is ruined.
• Well, shit, I just got haxed out of tournament xyz, that was mine to win. This was just so important to me and that fact that I should have won, but didn't, infuriates me. F this game and life, in fact, fuck it all, I'll just become a McDonalds employee for as long as I live.

If your beliefs are irrational, just like these previous four are, that is likely the reason as to why you are sad or upset. Change your beliefs - "I got dumped, it sucks yeah, but I'll meet someone else, I was fine before I met them, and I'll be fine after they're gone too," and you'll be far better off. Or in other words, don't be like, "this happened to me, that's terrible," just stop at, "this happened to me," it's better for you that way.

Only the end of the world is the end of the world.

I’ll just leave one of my favorite quotes here because I feel its relevant, - Life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you react.

I know this has its faults and is not perfect by any means and probably isn't the sole key to happiness in and of itself, but in general I thought it was pretty nice. I just wanted opinions of other people on this, do you agree, do you disagree, is this something you can incorporate into your personal life, or whatever else people have to say regarding this, I’d love to hear it!

If I ever find the article here I will post the link. I definitely recommend people give it a read, it’s profound in its wisdom and has personally helped me a great deal. I might have butchered some of the content as I wrote all this based off memory, but yeah.

 

[Plaessy]

I have lived by this philosophy for as long as I have knew it, and it really is nice. I like to add a certain thing from another philosophy to it though: Things that happen regardless of your influence are not things you should be pondering negatively about. I just don't remember if it was stoic or something else. So in short, you have room to improve if you were a factor in the thing, but if you weren't, then the thing just happened and that just... is.

It's really simplifying things, which is nice.

 

[Myzozoa]

tl;dr-see the link at the end. i feel like my post is quite incoherent, worse it's consistently self-contradicting.


Happiness might be caused by the holding/maintenance of rational beliefs, but what does a sensation tell you about the truth or falsity of your beliefs? It is obvious how quickly this would become confusing when we see all the time people buying into false beliefs from which they derive some pleasure. Thus it is already seemingly the case that we believe things that are not rational because they cause us a pleasurable feeling which i think some call happiness, As in the remark, "I know it's not true, but it makes me so happy to think on it". Or even "ignorance is bliss".

Maybe the happiness is in the fantasy, or maybe I am revealing myself too much in this monograph, and my own conflation of desire with happiness, either why I have worries about any supposition that rationality, consistency, belief in true things, is necessary or sufficient for happiness.

Now, you might say, "well, maybe they get a pleasurable feeling from believing irrationally/fantasizing as you said, but they aren't actually 'happy'." but how do you know?

Consider that person who got haxed out of the tournament finals win on smogon, maybe they really would be better off quitting the game. in your example you discuss them deciding to quit and become a mcdonalds employee, but more likely is theyd be less successful in the employment sense if they were not putting time into pokemon tournaments. so even if we're not talking about happiness, there is a question about whether an emotional action can be understood as being rational or irrational. Can it be justified? This is a separate question.


suppose we're defining happiness in a particular way so as it is no longer a sensation. Now, we may be getting us closer to the truth about what happiness is: not a feeling/sensation, but something else, something longer term. But, if that is so, then it seems like having irrationally negative thoughts every once in a while, even often, would not be enough shake the one that 'truly' possesses this happiness, understood to be something lasting or enduring.

Why does correcting the rationality of our attempted verbalizations of our feelings help us, More than just correcting our understanding of feelings in the moment? Like, if i remind myself that I am more than my feelings, isnt that even more useful than attempting to rationalize my likely irrational feelings? I see the op's method as perhaps a useful addition for moving past feelings to the one i have just mentioned, but not really one that outstrips it. I'm a traumatized person, I react to somethings out of fear and anger. Often it feels justified, famously there is a term in psychology called 'justification', which as in philosophy, has no end to be found. I can easily reach for rational justifications for an irrational action brought about by an emotion. I remind myself that I am not just my feelings, in fact in many ways my feelings are... not in my power, not belonging to me:

"The things other people have put into my head, at any rate, do not fit together nicely, are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another, are out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head." (emphasis mine)

My feelings are 'out of proportion' with my material reality, they carry me away, they act on me.

The view in the op powerfully shows how thoughts can contribute to the manifestation of a feeling, particularly a sad feeling, but there is nothing wrong with being sad or thinking something negative, as long as you never doubt (i.e know) that your being amounts to more significance than your thoughts and feelings at any given moment. This technique comes before a theory of rationality (it does not depend on one).


Plaessy it was some stoic, that argued it was irrational to worry about things 'not in your power', but aristotle also centred that claim in discussions at the beginning of Ethics. My worry again is that you will discover how little is within your power, and how easy it is to see a causal chain, at every event, that begins 'outside one's power'. Thus one that started out from the stance that they ought not to worry about what is not within their power must still have loads of worries about externalizing vs. internalizing responsibility. Or, they could worry about how to bring more things under their power in the pursuit of responsibility, after all, upon discovering that their dividual self-will may have no necessary material potency to act ethically, the move would then become to manifest as an individual and have power act through them (wow i bet no one can figure out what that last set of clauses means, try this next one->), so, if i am weak and thus not that morally responsible, I move to change this by getting more material power. With more material power, it seems that, in some way I am a more substantial agent. So the opponents of the ancient philosophers in many dialogues asserted morality is 'the advantage of the stronger'. And such a claim has never really been knocked down afaik. I hope I have illustrated that it is not necessarily always simpler, there remain many lines of questions, though I sympathize with that way of thinking.


lastly, i disagree with a suggestion that there are no good or bad states of affairs/events, only good and bad interpretations. I assert that there are actual, real, true bad things that take place.


"life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react."- to this i say:

it must be nice to have had so little of life happen to oneself, what a privilege and blessing. i really dont think this is a rational ethical perspective, but it is consistent with the supposition that there are no good or bad events, only good and bad interpretations.


finally ill leave you with this

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/unhappy

 

[Godard]

This is really cool, thank you guys so much!