Our culture treats happiness as a formula that can be solved. For instance, we may think: If I get a certain thing or do a certain thing, such as marry the right person or live in the right community, I’ll be happy. Or, we treat happiness as something we can earn or acquire.
However, happiness isn’t something you get in return for an achievement (such as a new job) or something to be found in a “top 10 steps” article from a self-help guru. It’s not something that’s given or that you passively receive, or that is waiting for you somewhere.
Happiness grows from solving problems or overcoming challenges — an activity that improves our lives, creates satisfaction, and is ongoing (creating yet more satisfaction).
Being unhappy or dissatisfied is a necessary component. As the Buddha taught, pain and loss are integral to life and we shouldn’t resist them, but rather allow them to lead us to something better.
Suffering and dissatisfaction are actually part of our biology. Dissatisfaction and insecurity spurred our ancestors to search out, build, and fight for better living conditions. They are a survival mechanism for advancing our species that is still useful in motivating us to improve our lives.
As a result, we will always live with a certain amount of dissatisfaction — we’re designed to always be dissatisfied with what we have and wanting what we don’t have.
Dissatisfaction in the form of physical or emotional pain tells us what to pay attention to and tells us our limits. It can be healthy or necessary — from it we learn what to do differently in the future. For instance, when we get burned, we learn not to touch a hot stove again.
Pain also indicates something is out of whack, and spurs us to fix it.
We tend to think of problems as something we need to get rid of once and for all in order to be happy. But problems or challenges are never-ending. This is actually a good thing because solving problems leads to satisfaction and improved circumstances.
You should welcome problems, because without them, you can’t be happy and wouldn’t have an opportunity to learn and improve.
When you solve one problem, you create new ones. You replace your challenges with better ones that you would rather deal with. For instance, when you address a health problem by joining a gym, you add other problems: having to get up early to go to the gym, obtaining transportation, and paying the fees. You shouldn’t be overwhelmed by having to solve new problems that pop up — it’s all part of the journey.
Problems don’t ever go away; their nature changes. Warren Buffett still has money problems like all of us — they’re just different problems from what we have.
People get derailed by:
Strive for problems you’ll feel good about solving, that improve your life or give you a sense of accomplishment and new skills. Good problems and challenges can be straightforward — for example, eating food that’s good for you — or more complicated like fixing a relationship.
Although we like the idea of being happy and problem-free all the time, we can’t be. But we still try. We fixate on our emotions, misunderstanding their function and allowing them to lead us in the wrong direction.
The purpose of emotions is to give you feedback, telling you that something is good or bad for you. Emotions point you toward useful change.
Negative emotions are a signal to take action. For instance, feeling sad because we are alone teaches us to not do the things that created our aloneness in the first place.
Positive emotions are a reward for doing the right thing.
Here’s where people go wrong in handling their emotions:
Most people can easily answer the question, “What do you want from life?” They say the same things: They want a happy, carefree life, with all the things they desire.
But because happiness grows from solving problems and overcoming challenges, it requires struggle — for instance you might struggle to improve your relationship skills, or to become physically fit.
The real question is: What are you willing to fight for? What pain are you willing to endure to get what you want? Your answer determines how your life turns out.
For example, many people want the promotion to the corner office but not the 65-hour work weeks it takes to get there and stay there. Author Mark Manson liked the idea of becoming a musician, but eventually realized he didn’t have the motivation to do the work required to get there. (Our culture would define this as a failure, but actually it meant that he didn’t really want to be a musician in the first place.)
Often people fixate on the results they want, and ignore the process required to achieve it. Or, they settle for what’s easier, to avoid a struggle. But they end up unhappy, because struggle is a necessary component of achieving the satisfaction that comes from taking on challenges and solving problems.
You have to accept and engage with (not try to avoid) the negative aspects of an experience in order to get to the positive ones. Again, you don’t end up with a great body without the pain of exercising. You can’t be a successful entrepreneur if you don’t deal with the risks, failures, and long hours needed to get a new business started. The same applies to love, which entails emotional pain.
You must choose what kind of pain/struggle is meaningful to you. You don’t get to stop striving in life because striving for worthwhile things, as opposed to superficial things, is the point. Your trajectory should be an ongoing upward spiral of solving more and more problems.