How does one achieve happiness?

...

Become one with your insanity

How does one achieve sadness?

Just stop being sad nigga lmao

It's that easy.

blending your function and purpose in life

Good post.

>Don't deceive yourself into thinking you'll be happier and turn your life around once you get "x external thing", like a promotion, winning the lottery, etc. Statistics show the happiness gained is fleeting after a certain point (I believe after a salary of 70k the returns you get to happiness diminish significantly).
Isn't that just because of people not following point #2?

Pretty much, still doesn't hurt to break things down a little bit.

Lots of people tend to think "I'd be happy if only I had [thing]" but it's rare that getting [thing] actually makes them happier outside the short term.

maximum edge

>and don't let shit outside your control bug you. If being pissed doesn't help your situation, why would you be miserable for no reason?

youtube.com/watch?v=Yylz3pHE5Vc

This tbqh senpai.

There's a hornet in my room. Before that I had 12 units of happiness, now I only have 7.

>Statistics show the happiness gained is fleeting after a certain point

I would like to see this statistic.

Turns out it's 75k. Anyway I read about it in a book, I think it was Thinking Fast and Slow but it might be another one, I've heard the 75k thing said a few times (and I've heard it cited in a couple cognitive science lectures too).

A quick google brings this up, though.

content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2019628,00.html

The idea can be summed up as "day to day you don't feel significantly happier when you're super rich, but when you look back on your life you're more likely to feel you achieved something, which makes you happy."

The thing is, you don't need to be rich to get that sense of achievement, you just need to feel like you achieved something. If you're sacrificing your day to day happiness on a job that makes you miserable so you can have a high income, you're just hampering your own happiness.

You'd probably be marginally more satisfied with your life making $100k to $75k but going from day to day you probably won't feel that much better, maybe even worse if you took a more stressful job for the higher income.

You don't need to believe it - if money is your driving motivator maybe it'll be different for you - but lots of people think "once I'm rich enough then I'll finally be happy" when their problem stems from elsewhere, in large part likely the constant desire to have more and an inability to be content with what they have. This can drive ambition but it can also make you unsatisfied.

Another neat thing Thinking Fast and Slow touched on in regards to people reflecting on how good their life is is that it can change pretty significantly day to day depending on your mood at the time and how the question is framed.
Say you haven't had a girlfriend in 10 years and you're lonely. For the most part it doesn't bother you (You enjoy your own company and get along just fine on average) but when you're reminded about it it makes you feel like you're missing out on something. If someone reminds you of it, then asks you how happy your life is, people on average fill in "I haven't had a girlfriend in 10 years, I'm doing something wrong, my life sucks." but if it hadn't been framed in regards to girlfriends they might rate their life happiness higher.

"Life satisfaction" (which increased income about 75k improves) is an (attempted) objective review of how happy you think you are (which can fluctuate), while day to day happiness is your actual mood.

The book's pretty neat in general, says a lot about the weird irrational shortcuts our brain takes to come to conclusions about difficult questions.

browse /pol/

Studies show that wasps and hornets feed on the misery of others.

Try dying, you are happy when you are not unhappy.

know yourself

Fulfil your desires.

Correction; happiness is the emotion, unhappiness is the lack of that emotion.

So being dead would technically mean you're unhappy.

peace from environmental stability, free from duress,unknowns, and unwants. self is the only thing that is responsible for happiness. self is the only thing that can give, maintain, define, be at peace with, and understand, non dependant upon another - in truth

apart from that answer

drugs - cannabis etc at leissure, free from restraint of scarcity & external dependencies for lifestyle. where this comes from.. usually transgenerationally built - as responsibility
exercise - personally meaningful
sex & companionship - someone special
the "good life"

ayy

Opposite of everything this user said

Try to get stuff as much as possible

I swear to God once you got it all you'll be happy
Trust me

muh hedonism

No
Working towards goals and feeling needed by the people you're surrounded by

Stoicism is a pretty decent way of achieving happiness.

Impossible for humans. Only the infinite being can be happy, only God can be happy. Humans are finite therefore miserable.

Happiness is a dumb life goal. People will inevitably feel the emotion of happiness at some point during their lifetime no matter what conditions they may be living in (barring clinical depression etc). It's not something attainable, you feel happiness and then you stop feeling it for a while and you'll probably feel it again. This cycle will continue until you die.

>Happiness is a dumb life goal.

It's within your power to minimize unhappiness and maximize happiness. Why would you not aspire to be as happy as possible?

>you feel happiness and then you stop feeling it for a while and you'll probably feel it again.

You consider happiness some external thing that happens or doesn't happen to you, totally outside your control? Don't you feel any agency in your own life?

fix'd

>Don't you feel any agency in your own life?

Yes, but not when it comes to my emotional reactions to things. You absolutely cannot "maximize" happiness because it's not a quantifiable substance. It's impermanent and has no ties to your greater situation, and rather your reaction to your immediate environment. I don't like being unhappy, but it's kind of meaningless.

"Fulfillment" might be a better goal, but even that is kind of a spook

>muh spooks

You absolute can "maximize" happiness by using your reason and analyzing what brings you joy and what brings you misery. People can and do train themselves to approach situations in ways that reduces how totally miserable they feel. For one, by minimizing situations where they have negative emotional reactions.

Does procrastinating make you stressed and miserable? You can address that. Is your job making you miserable? You can address that.

And then as for things that make you depressed that you can't address (say getting fired), a little bit of thought and practice and you can basically train yourself to not fret so much over shit you can't control. Sure, if you got fired it'd probably make you feel like shit, but when you realize feeling like shit doesn't get you a new job and you'd be better off worrying about things you can fix (finding a new job), you can generally improve your mood.

By addressing the things within your control that make you unhappy and not fretting so much about things outside your control you're taking active steps to be less unhappy. It takes some top tier delusion to think you have zero control over your mood when it's been proven that literally just smiling more, eating better and getting vitamin D makes you feel happier. Why would you not do what was in your power to make you happier?