[vorpalhex]

There is nothing which will make you happy. You must choose to be happy.

There is no job, no amount of money, no relationship, which will make you feel whole and happy and content and done. The opposite doesn't hold - there are jobs and relationships and financial strains which will certainly keep you from being happy.

The goal isn't for a job or a relationship to make you happy. It's to enable other things which are your goals, which may or may not be happiness related.

[snarf21]

This reminds me of a quote from Stewart Brand during an interview with Tim Ferris.

".... and being proud is the most reliable source of happiness that I know."[https://tim.blog/2018/02/03/the-tim-ferriss-show-transcripts...]

Teach yourself how to cook, get in shape, draw a picture, write a story, help someone less fortunate, teach someone something you know, learn how to juggle... In the end it doesn't really matter what it is but you will have that proud feeling and be happy in that moment. Rinse and repeat.

[Baeocystin]

Speaking strictly for myself, I have not found this to be true. I do enjoy collecting skills, and learning is fun. But no matter what the skill, eventually you hit the wall of diminishing returns, and I find that pride in that last 1-2% of performance is not worth the cost in time; I would rather improve a weaker skill another 10-20% with the same amount of training. And fundamentally, I find pride a bit too solipsistic to be truly satisfying no matter what the skill.

What I have found permanently effective is practicing gratefulness. Every day I make it a point to think of things that I am genuinely grateful to have, or to have experienced. This (for me), more than anything else, helps put my mind at ease, and allow me to enjoy the life that I have.

[marmadukester39]

I agree. The challenge for me has been that in practicing gratitude I find myself fearing the loss of the things for which I am grateful even more.

[Baeocystin]

I can't say I am 100% great at following my own advice, here, but I do find that it helps to try and focus on experiences that I am grateful for instead of physical things, and for much the same reason as what you give- you can't have experiences taken away in the same manner as a physical thing.

[AlwaysRock]

You're touching on something I can relate to. Being proud doesnt make me happy. But the sense of progression that comes along with learning or mastering something does. I enjoy nothing more than taking a skill I am okay at to something that I am great at.

The issue is this is hard and takes a lot of dedicated work to do.

[agumonkey]

Pride is also frail, see people who talk about impostor syndrom, they have weak pride, if at all, even when they get a good position. Self-esteem has to be calibrated, then you can have stable pride and, I agree, happiness.

[PakG1]

Very true, but once you make the decision, all those other things are multipliers. Just unfortunately, if you make the negative decision, well the negative still multiplies too.... hence the divorces and all the drama at work....

If you took away my marriage and job, I would be markedly more unhappy. I imagine if I ever have a big wad of cash sitting around, I would be a bit less happy if that disappeared too (only because keeping it around certainly would only keep me at the status quo, if not make me more happy).

What's that they say about coming into a lot of money, that it just reveals who your true self is?

And yes, some people get into crappy marriages or crappy jobs where they just get knocked down 24/7. But I've observed that negative people easily self-prophesy into negative situations far more often than positive people.

edit: added points

[nismoskyz]

"But I've observed that negative people easily self-prophesy into negative situations far more often than positive people." Very much agree with this.

[everdev]

Happiness is an emotion, it comes and goes. Even the premise of "are you happy?" is missing the point.

Are we talking about feeling happiness twice as much as feeling sadness? 4x, 10x? Sadness can come from things outside our control.

I think a better goal is are you present? Are you listening to yourself and to what you really want for your life?

Everyone will want different things but making an emotion the goal is a fools errand.

[elcomet]

I don't believe happiness is an emotion. Joy is an emotion, it comes and goes. But happiness is more than this, it can be a perpetual state of consciousness and comes in parallel to emotions.

[ljm]

I like to see that as fulfilment, or contentment.

[TomMarius]

Thank you. This might seem trivial but I was struggling to put my thoughts about this into words for several weeks.

[parylose]

That reminds me of a Billy Joel (singer) interview. He said he was always asked if he was happy now and he stressed out when he couldn't answer yes. He ended up pursuing happiness at high cost. He eventually realized just because he wasn't happy didn't mean he was sad. Happiness and sadness are extremes. Most of the time you just are. He learned to just be and appreciate the happy times.

[CrazyPyroLinux]

The Oatmeal did a great comic on this, which I think illustrates your point perfectly: https://theoatmeal.com/static/unhappy.html

[beat]

Happiness is not a choice. If you think it is, try learning more about clinical depression.

[Liquix]

Some people's brain chemistry makes feeling happiness much more difficult. Some people with clinical depression will physically never experience happiness the same way others do. That's true and valid.

But does that really mean that being happy is not a choice?

A paraplegic is unable to choose to move their legs due to a medical condition - would they assert that 'moving your legs is not a choice'?

[chongli]

I'm extremely skeptical of the brain chemistry narrative. It doesn't explain why depression is growing rapidly in the Western world. It doesn't explain why antidepressants vary so widely in their efficacy between persons.

I'm far more apt to believe that people's lives are getting worse and that they're depressed as a result. People are lonelier than ever and society's problems are bigger and more abstract than ever.

We're no longer even cogs in a machine, we're atoms in a cog. Meaning in life has become extremely elusive.

[beat]

That's like saying there wasn't cancer before cancer was first diagnosed. I don't think clinical depression is becoming more commonplace. I think it's becoming more recognized. I'm old enough to predate modern drug treatments for depression, but as a child, I saw plenty of untreated depression around. I recognize it for what it was now.

[Liquix]

I completely agree. As Chamath Palihapitiya (ex-Facebook) eloquently puts it, our technology culture is 'ripping apart the social fabric of how society works' [0]. We're social creatures who thrive on human interaction and sharing genuine moments - social media gives us the exact opposite [1].

The really insidious thing is that many of the big players and driving forces behind these trends saw it coming, knew that what they were building may have far-reaching negative consequences, and then chose to do it anyway for the sake of money. What a time to be alive, right?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78oMjNCAayQ

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4853817/

[MaxBarraclough]

Not trying to sound smart here, but if that's your position, why did you go with Some people's brain chemistry...?

[Liquix]

I believe that a small percentage of the population is born neurochemically imbalanced (classic clinical depression), but also that the recent rise in anxiety and depression rates is mainly caused by societal and technological factors.

[dragonsngoblins]

It is easy to explain why antidepressants vary wildly even if all depression is caused by issues in brain chemistry: the constellation of symptoms we define as "depression" is actually several different illnesses that respond to different treatments.

This is why when people start on antidepressants it is a process of trying different ones until they find one that works.

[claudiawerner]

This is so right; Mark Fisher was a prominent author in left-wing/radical circles; he took his life after a long struggle with depression, which he warned and wrote about continuously; an excerpt:

> “Capitalist realism insists on treating mental health as if it were a natural fact, like weather (but, then again, weather is no longer a natural fact so much as a political-economic effect). In the 1960s and 1970s, radical theory and politics (Laing, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, etc.) coalesced around extreme mental conditions such as schizophrenia, arguing, for instance, that madness was not a natural, but a political, category. But what is needed now is a politicization of much more common disorders. Indeed, it is their very commonness which is the issue: in Britain, depression is now the condition that is most treated by the NHS. In his book The Selfish Capitalist, Oliver James has convincingly posited a correlation between rising rates of mental distress and the neoliberal mode of capitalism practiced in countries like Britain, the USA and Australia. In line with James’s claims, I want to argue that it is necessary to reframe the growing problem of stress (and distress) in capitalist societies. Instead of treating it as incumbent on individuals to resolve their own psychological distress, instead, that is, of accepting the vast privatization of stress that has taken place over the last thirty years, we need to ask: how has it become acceptable that so many people, and especially so many young people, are ill?”

Some good articles on the political-economic phenomenon of depression, the response of mainstream treatment techniques and mental health in general:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/16/mental...

https://www.rs21.org.uk/2014/04/27/kpunk/

[ionised]

Depression isn't attributable to any one cause. For some people it is clinical and biological, and these people need medical treatment and therapy; sometimes for their entire lives.

Then there is the depression you get after a bad relationship, or as you said, an increasingly individualistic and adversarial consumer society that goers against our social instincts.

[claudiawerner]

On the brain chemistry idea, there's an interesting quote about how this idea is used (regardless of its theoretical validity) to push a certain narrative:

> “The current ruling ontology denies any possibility of a social causation of mental illness. The chemico-biologization of mental illness is of course strictly commensurate with its depoliticization. Considering mental illness an individual chemico-biological problem has enormous benefits for capitalism. First, it reinforces Capital’s drive towards atomistic individualization (you are sick because of your brain chemistry). Second, it provides an enormously lucrative market in which multinational pharmaceutical companies can peddle their pharmaceuticals (we can cure you with our SSRls). It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; and the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism.”

[bradstewart]

Not OP, but I took the comment in the context of your average healthy person. An illness absolutely affects the equation. I don't think anyone is suggesting depression is a choice.

[metabagel]

We can choose to be content, and we can choose to be open to being happy.

[tuesdayrain]

Happiness is definitely a choice, although perhaps not for everyone. If I start thinking about some positive memories, I can consciously make myself happy right now.

[beat]

Is that happiness, or just pleasure? They're different things. Pleasure is transient, fleeting. Happiness is a stable state.

[senderista]

But choosing to deal with your depression is a choice. I know this from experience.

[newsgremlin]

The focus should be on living in the present, that's the only place you will find happiness. And if you pass by those moments without appreciation, you'll only feel regret and anxiously wait for the next bit of happiness to be found.

[djKianoosh]

Right on. It's the difference between temporary joy/contentment and true happiness.

[tootie]

I think "choose" isn't even the right term. Everyone has it in them to be happy, but it's way harder for some people than others.

[untilHellbanned]

It's not a choice.

[snarf21]

Happiness is not a direct choice but choose to help someone or choose to learn a new skill. Those things will make you happier in the long run.

[dwild]

It's a choice to become happy. It sadly won't happen by itself and if you do nothing to become happy, you'll most likely never be.

The path to become happy isn't instant though, it's much more complex than flipping a light switch, it's definitely harder for some than others (and possibly even impossible for some sadly), but for sure, you need to decide to become happy if you ever want to be.

[metabagel]

I think that I would say that we can't choose to be happy, but we can choose to be content, and we can choose not to dwell in sadness. We can allow our emotions to fluctuate and not stay fixed in depression. We do this by not fixing our thoughts, and by being open to the present moment.

[tveita]

You can't always make yourself happy but you can always make yourself unhappy.

[simonh]

Then what is it?

Jordan Peterson, who for a long time I wrote off as a crackpot until I actually paid attention to some of his interviews and lectures, talks a lot about this. Happiness is a pretty crappy goal to have. It's a side effect of pursuing actual, worthwhile goals. People need to take some responsibility for their own state of mind and the things they are choosing to do that affect it.

[fenwick67]

This makes perfect sense, it explains why successful people are never sad!

[nkozyra]

> Then what is it?

It's a response. Internal responses, sure, but also - and more dramatically - to external ones.

> Jordan Peterson, who for a long time I wrote off as a crackpot

Trust your initial instincts ;)

[simonh]

Some of what he says is a bit disturbing, but he has a lot of statistics and cites a lot of sources that seem very credible, and I've yet to come across any counter-arguments that are anything more than incredulity and ideology. I'd love to see a plausible and knowledgeable counter argument.

[pa7ch]

Not everything he says is off base and he does present the basics of clinical psychology well. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is an interesting field one can gain a lot from studying. However many things he talks or just hints at can be questional and neither his expertise nor fairly presented.

It helps his cause that many criticisms of him are terrible and involve many fabrications.

This youtube channel contra points is a much better criticism then mine: https://youtu.be/4LqZdkkBDas

[simonh]

Well that's very entertaining, but sill doesn't engage with his actual points directly. "You have rules - have a purpose in life, and we have rules - gender pronouns". That's not an equivalence. Peterson's rules are just guidelines, in Canada the gender pronoun thing is a legally compelled requirement under which Peterson's University tried to officially discipline him, not a guideline.

Fobbing that off as "well he's just being mean to us nice people", when they went after his career and means of supporting his family (at the time), doesn't cut it.

[moorhosj]

What is the argument you want to see countered?

[watwut]

People take responsibility for their own mind. To the point that they see basic emotions as sins in both themselves and others. To the point where unhappiness is seen as something wrong with you and something you should not talk about.

Also, worthy goals often bring pain. They often require you to forego own hapiness for something you consider more valuable. They often leave you burnout, feeling empty, unsatisfied and tired maybe even ressentfull. In particular, caregiving work is often like that. Soldiers also follow goals worthy to them (whether you personally agree or not with this or that goal) and are not happier in the result - it is called sacrifice for a reason. Those two are just obvious examples, not the only ones.

In addition to all that, your own happy personally worthy goal often brings unhappiness to somebody else, often to familly. It is extremely unfair to then blame that person for his or her own unhappiness since that has a lot to do with mine (or yours) decisions.