[randallsquared]

Happiness is a natural measurement of how well you (believe you) are achieving your goals. If you are unhappy, it's a signal that you should change something about your life, not a signal that you should short-circuit the measurement system.

[jmilloy]

Changing something about your life is a valid response. So is short-circuiting the measurement system. Keep in mind that the measurement system includes external cultural/societal pressures, out-of-date instinctual responses, and your emotions as interpreted through the lens of your own emotions. A disadvantage of changing what you do, instead of how to feel about what you do, is that you will probably arrive at a place of dissatisfaction over and over again.

[scotch_drinker]

This. I have a friend who changes jobs about every 6-12 months chasing happiness. And every 6-12 months, I can count on him starting to bitch and moan about everything at the job. He refuses to listen to the idea that maybe happiness should be externally obtained and instead should start from within somehow. In a lot of ways, this seems to be an Eastern-Western dichotomy.

We can decide to wake up and be happy or we can decide to wake up and let something dictate our happiness. Whether we do it consciously or not, it's still a choice.

[TheSOB888]

That is nothing at all like happiness. Are you one of those people without emotions? It's OK, I was too for a long time. It happens a lot to people in tech, or people who end up in tech.

Anyways, happiness is an innate emotion. It's much more central than anything about "achieving" your goals. If you don't feel stressed about the future, don't wish you were somewhere else/someone else/doing something else constantly, if you are having your psychological needs met, you are happy. Goal-based happiness is almost as bad as money-based happiness. You have to be more well-rounded than just focusing on your goals.

[randallsquared]

"Are you one of those people without emotions? It's OK, I was too for a long time."

Haha. Healthy people have emotions for reasons. If you don't introspect about why you are happy, sad, content, enraged, or depressed, you will have less information about how well you are living your life according to your own standards.

"It's much more central than anything about "achieving" your goals."

It's not clear to me how something could be more central than goals, so I don't think we're using the term "goal" in the same way.

"You have to be more well-rounded than just focusing on your goals."

Why would you want to be well-rounded?

That answer you just thought of? It's a goal.

[asdasf]

You are confusing a sense of accomplishment for happiness. That suggests that you may not have felt happiness enough (or recently enough) to recognize it.

[resu_nimda]

Not really. He's just using a more broad (scientific?) definition of the word "goal".

Eating food every day is a goal. Getting enough sleep is a goal. Peter Gibbons in The Office has a goal to do absolutely nothing.

[resu_nimda]

I meant Office Space. How embarrassing.

[dbingham]

Actually, no. That is not what happiness is. We don't know exactly what happiness is. But ironically, those who are happiest are often those who we would say are least productive and haven't achieved anything.

Case in point, one of the happiest families measured is an old family that lives in the Louisiana bayou. They're poor. They don't work much. They hunt and fish for a lot of their food and they all still live pretty close. They spend their days wandering the bayou and hanging out.

And they're happy.

[6d0debc071]

> Happiness is a natural measurement of how well you (believe you) are achieving your goals.

And what are your goals? If they're just things you set out to achieve, then that's false. We set out to achieve things that bring us no real pleasure in the achievement of - qualifications, promotions etc.