If you’re anything like me, you might find that happiness doesn’t always come ‘easily.’ Sometimes, you feel the weight of overthinking and struggle to find joy in the little things. It’s also not uncommon to experience sadness or depression and even question your ability to feel ‘normal.’

If that resonates, I have good news: there are powerful mind shifts to boost life satisfaction. Looking back, I regret not embracing these in my 20s. So, in this video, I’ll share a few to hopefully help you, too.

Medicine

“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken heart drieth up the bones.”
— King Solomon.

By definition, happiness is:

  • a state of well-being and contentment;
  • a pleasurable or satisfying experience;
  • a complex and multifaceted emotion that encompasses a range of positive feelings, from contentment to intense joy

Viewing it from a medical standpoint, Dr. John A Schindler regards happiness as:

“a state of mind in which our thinking is pleasant for a significant portion of the time.”
— Dr. John A. Schindler. 365 Days of Living

In contrast, he identifies the opposite—’unhappiness’ and ‘dis-ease’—as the root causes of psychosomatic ills and the basis of disease.

Happiness is Not a Reward

One misconception about happiness is that to feel joy and satisfaction, we have to first be virtuous or perform according to certain expectations. In reality, that order is reversed; it’s essential to first feel good so you can perform optimally.

“It appears that in our popular thinking about happiness, we managed to get the cart before the horse. “Be good,” we say,” and you will be happy.” “I would be happy,” we say to ourselves, “if I could be successful and healthy.” It might be nearer the truth we said, “Be happy — and you will be good more successful, healthier, feel and act more charitably toward others.”
— Psycho-Cybernetics, p. 108

Taking Ownership

Thanks to societal and religious dogmas, it is often believed that pursuing happiness is selfish. On the contrary, if happiness comes solely from acting ‘unselfishly,’ it still becomes a prize or reward. This implies that more radical self-denial and misery would bring greater satisfaction. Hence it leads to the absurd conclusion that the way to be happy is by being unhappy. In the words of Maxwell Maltz:

“If there’s a moral issue involved, it is on the side of happiness rather than unhappiness…”

The key is to realize that you are responsible for making yourself happy in the current moment, and this primarily happens internally.

Happiness Here and Now

Rooted in reward-punishment paradigms, another misconception is that your well-being is available only after you bring specific outcomes. As the basis of hustle culture, this can include:

  • Getting a better job
  • Making more money
  • Attracting a partner, etc.

While these goals are worth striving for, achieving them should not determine your mood and well-being. Instead, take ownership and cultivate happiness independently. This will increase resilience, empowering you to navigate whatever obstacles appear. To do so:

  • Start living in the present, embracing the situation.
  • Understand that happiness is a mental habit that can be developed like any other habit.

To assist with this, Flow psychology teaches that overcoming the obstacles of the present moment requires freedom from societal and environmental constraints.

“To overcome anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the societal environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments (…).”

“We often grow up believing that what counts most in our lives will occur in the future. Teachers assure pupils that the boring clases will benefit them later, when the students are going to look for jobs. As Ralph Waldo Emerson noted, “We are always getting to live, but never living.” Or, as poor Frances learned in the children’s story, it is always bread and jam tomorrow, never bread and jam today.”
— Flow. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Undoing Unhappiness

Arguably, being happy all the time is impossible. However, much of our unhappiness is actually programmed and cultivated over time. It is like a bad habit that drains our life force. This results in:

  • Grumpiness
  • Self-pity
  • Anger
  • Hate
  • Dissatisfaction
  • And even depression

Although predispositions and chemical imbalances play roles, these feelings often stem from learned behaviors and negative thought patterns that have become deeply ingrained automatic responses. Over time, they cause us to overreact to even minor problems, whether personal, interpersonal, or random events.

Deconditioning

One antidote is to take daily time to practice:

  • Mindfulness: Being aware when the destructive auto-pilot kicks in;
  • Thinking pleasant thoughts: Spend time each day focusing on positive and uplifting ideas;
  • Forming and experiencing life-affirming emotions:
    This is (1) Engaging in activities that foster joy and contentment. And (2) creating new emotions, as in Morita Therapy.
  • Making Conscious Decisions: Using (some) willpower to choose to stay optimistic, even in challenging situations.

Based on my experience, it’s very effective to see these practices as crucial to your self-improvement, as they help reshape yourself similar to:

  • Going to the gym
  • Eating healthy
  • Reading
  • Journaling
  • Taking cold showers
  • Meditating, etc.

And just like those, they need practice. By consistently engaging in them, you can cultivate a habit of happiness, increasing your resilience and independence from external circumstances. As Maxwell Maltz wisely noted:

“The habit of being happy enables one to be freed or largely freed from the dominion of outward conditions…”

— Psycho-Cybernetics, p. 108

Opinions Matter

“Pain is slight if opinion has added nothing to it;… in thinking it slight, you will make it slight. Everything depends on opinion; ambition, luxury, greed, hark back to opinion. It is according to opinion that we suffer…. So let us also win the way to victory in all our struggles, – for the reward is… virtue, steadfastness of soul, and a peace that is won for all time.”
— Seneca

The quote reminds us that our suffering often stems not from the events themselves but from the weight we give them in our minds. Aware of this, we can better control how much we allow external circumstances to influence our inner peace.

Now…While Seneca’s message might be too radical, your opinions of the situation can either make or break it. Managing those can prevent negativity from flooding your day. Sometimes, things are ‘really bad.’ Others, they really aren’t, and even when they are, obsessing over it doesn’t help.

According to Epictetus:

“Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen…”
— Epictetus

Like Seneca, Epictetus emphasizes that it’s not the events themselves that disturb us but how we perceive them.

In the words of William James, “Much of what we call evil is due entirely to the way men take the phenomenon…”
— William James

Similarly, Wayne Dyer suggests that:

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
— Wayne Dyer

Lastly, here (I promise), Viktor Frankl was known for saying:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing:
The last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to chose one’s own way.”
— Viktor Frankl

Viewing your negative opinions as a mere bias helps you detach from the situation without letting it affect other areas of your life. Such a detachment enables clear thinking and focusing on potential solutions, as there is always something you can do. So the message here is:

Don’t wait to feel better to take action. Take action, and you’ll feel better.

Problem-Solving

Speaking of solutions, personal development books often link passive living with stagnation and even death. Depression frequently mirrors this concept:

  • Remaining stagnant while indulging in self-pity and surrendering to the chaos around you.
  • Feeling paralyzed due to a lack of vision or purpose, which we’ll explore further.

Similarly, psychologist Harry Levi Hollingworth highlights that problem-solving and readiness to face challenges are crucial for happiness. As emphasized by individual psychology:

Humans are not cause-driven but inherently goal-oriented creatures. When we pursue something exciting and compelling, taking action regardless of the circumstances, states like depression and sadness diminish.

Unifying the Self

Qabalistic Psychology suggests that unifying the aspects of the self/soul is mandatory for revealing your life purpose and that negative moods and even illnesses stem from internal disunity.

Conventional wisdom and psychoanalysis argue that this disunity is rooted in past experiences. Hence, to achieve well-being and unity, you should dig out past conflicts from your memory and reconcile them with the present and future, relying on aetiology (the study of causation).

In contrast, individual psychology promotes living through the lens of teleology, focusing on future-oriented problem-solving. This perspective encourages you to move beyond negative experiences, recognizing they don’t define you. According to Adler:

“No experience is in itself a cause of our success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences—the so-called trauma—but instead, we make out of them whatever suits our purposes. We are not determined by our experiences, but the meaning we give them is self-determining.”
—Alfred Adler

Complementing that, Psycho-Cybernetics offers to develop the habit of relentlessly solving particular problems and achieving meaningful goals daily. Also to:

“Let the sleeping dogs (aka your past negative experiences) lie.”
—Maxwell Maltz

Besides consistent action, this includes taking time to visualize making things happen in your imagination:

“Form the habit of reacting aggressively and positively toward threats and problems. Form the habit of keeping goal-oriented all the time, regardless of what happens. Do this by practicing a positive, aggressive attitude both in actual everyday situations and also in your imagination. See yourself in your imagination taking positive action toward solving a problem or accomplishing a goal.”

According to Victor Frankl’s Logotherapy, people enter an ‘existential void’, including chronic misery and depression, when they no longer have a life purpose. The cure is finding one resonating with the current stage of your journey. Apparently, this could be broken down into a series of small goals to strive to achieve and look forward to. Or a sequence of events in more esoteric terms, as discussed in a moment.

Personal Experience

I don’t know about you, but ruminating on past events never helped me get out of bad moods. It actually kept me stuck, only worsening things. Conversely, having a future-oriented purpose always puts me in a better place physically and mentally, taking me out of some of the darkest places I’ve ever been.

Whether that’s making music, learning a new skill, improving my physique, creating content, and working on my brand, I found that:

“When a purpose or goal meaningful enough is present, the self unifies to achieve and live it.”
Don’t wait for the perfect balance to pursue a meaningful purpose. Find and pursue it, and the balance will come naturally.
Let me know if you agree.”
— POTB

According to Peter J. Carroll, the life force, Chiah, seeks to express itself differently. So do not restrict it. Find and live its appropriate expression in the next chapter of your life.

Journaling

This is where journaling enters the picture. The primary purpose of habit trackers and bullet journals is to keep you on track in the upcoming weeks, days, or even hours. Using them in service of your true purpose might actually get you out of the lower states.

It’s one thing when those kick in (and you know you did nothing of what you could). It’s utterly different when they do, but you actually have progress documented through journaling and moving the needle tangibly. So the point here is this:

Journal to not only strive and demand from yourself but also appreciate the progress you’ve been making. You can do that separately or as part of gratitude practice, which is beyond the scope of this video.

By doing so and incorporating the Pomodoro technique, you’ll find it’s virtually impossible to be in flow states solving meaningful challenges and also be depressed.

After a while, I found such a tactic compliments that using the imagination. Through the first, you formulate the ideas and concepts behind the actions, producing your results. Through this you track and re-affirm those results or progress your sphere of being. Let me know your thoughts.

Memento Mori

Last but not least, remember that our time here is limited. While the philosophies I follow view death as a new beginning, the fact remains our current journey will end. This awareness isn’t meant to provoke fear but to inspire you to seize the opportunity of the present moment, living with a purpose and intention.

Sure, bad things happen here and there, and often, they are not your fault. Nevertheless, it is your responsibility not to let them deter you from making the most out of this and the following chapters in your life. The same applies to making yourself happy.

Time passes, yet it’s our most valuable asset. Embracing the moment and utilizing it as best as we can is vital —Not for anyone else but for your own self. But that’s just my opinion. Let me know if you agree. Check my digital products and books. Become a Patreon to support my work. Subscribe to the channel. And thank you for your time.