Verified by 
Key points
- We discover happiness through trial and error.
- Finding what “works” for each of us takes work, both psychologically and in life.
- In pursuing happiness, you have to learn from yourself and others.
- The world is like a book full of maps. They can lead you in the right direction, but you have to find your own way.
There are no real formulas for how to be happy. We discover how to be happy through trial and error, each of us arriving at some personal, even idiosyncratic, version of contentment that finally works for us.
Yet what works for us is also work. We can’t just open a book and follow the directions, because, invariably, the directions break down in practice. They raise more questions than they answer. They may even leave us feeling oddly, irredeemably atypical, out on a limb (“Why doesn’t this advice work for me? Am I weird?”).
To avoid such predicaments—which may leave us feeling even worse than we do already—we have to jettison the whole idea that there’s some set of curated directions somewhere that will make us like ourselves, enjoy our lives, stop experiencing regret. . . the list is endless, even as the advice is unresponsive. (It is the crowning irony of happiness advice that it can pitch into the reverse.)
So, we have to put in the psychic work and discover our own personal path towards happiness, often with the help of friends, a therapist, and the encouraging examples of people that we meet (or read about, or hear about through whatever means).
Of course, this approach may seem arduous, contingent, and a bit contrarian when there are so many longstanding prescriptions, all readily available, for arriving at happiness. For example, why not just:
practice gratitude, because every day is precious.
love your family and friends, and allow them to love you back.
pursue meaningful work.
stay fit, exercise, eat right, get enough sleep.
maintain an optimistic perspective.
have good values.
accept the past, keep an eye on the future, live fully in the present.
Why not? Because while these formulas are easy to cite, you cannot just apply them without overcoming obstacles that keep you from applying them. That is, the problem with these cliches is that they’re just distant goals on a long road (if I can cite another cliché) that we all traverse, trying to get past the bad parenting, traumatic romances, difficult bosses, and plain awful luck that afflict (and have afflicted) us, knocking us off balance.
How do we rebalance ourselves, so that our goals are more than just aspiration? The only arena in which we can address this question is the one that we call “real life,” where we have to clear away the obstacle to happiness that stand in our way.
In real life, most people find it impossible to jump out of bed and shout “I’m grateful for today” when there’s a toxic mix of stress and disappointment out to the horizon. They find it hard to get past what keeps them from some place that makes them happy. So, it’s pointless to tell people to be grateful, to be optimistic, if you cannot show them how real people have worked to get there.
My approach is about that process. People can live their lives forward while still looking around, learning from others, applying useful lessons to themselves. If this seems less straightforward than a sequence of bullet points, that’s because it’s true to life and, more to the point, dynamic. It walks the cliches back to their origin in renewed self-awareness, personal struggle, the give-and-take with what life hands us.
It acknowledges that easiness—straightforwardness—is often not an option, at least one that we can adopt and then forget about. There will always be obstacles to happiness, and we will always have to work to overcome them.
By “obstacles,” I mean both internal and external ones. Internally, we have our fears and anxieties, inhibitions and conflicts, developed over a lifetime. Perhaps intimacy scares us; perhaps we hate anyone in authority; it may seem that life is cheating us. We know we have to work on these issues, but it’s hard.
Externally, our roommates may be noisy and nosey—we get no peace—but we’re in a two-year lease that we can’t afford to break. Moreover, we’ve just applied for a government job, and if we suddenly move the security clearance might get pushed back several months. Is there some way of coping?
The answer to these questions will be highly individualized. We have to think about how people made the effort. We have to work hard at making an analogous effort—i.e., one that applies uniquely to us that is doable and, at least, satisfying enough to get us past the roughest spots.
There is an interesting term, “kludge,” which in fields like computer science mean a sort of workaround, a temporary solution that works well enough until something better comes along. So, rather than throwing up your hands, embrace the nearest kludge, then keep working towards a more durable approach.
While I am not dismissive of the tried and true, I offer a more nuanced approach. I think we should attend to the essential backstory, without which each formulaic goal is essentially useless—a mere marker on a road, with no map of how to reach it.
Remember, the world is a book full of maps—the ways people have travelled—which you can apply based on where you are now. I might say that they lead in the right direction but, more particularly, they should lead in the right direction for you.
You are the starting point. So, don’t be afraid to take a hard look at yourself and accept who you are. Then make every step count. Rather than letting other people define you, take the initiative. Learn from your mistakes, minimize regret, and keep going. It’s amazing what you’ll pick up if you remain attentive. Every day is a page of your memoir, even if you never write it down.
