Happiness is not a random occurrence, and it certainly does not result from following some random someone on YouTube who is already happy. It takes insight into yourself.
Rather than anxiously running around trying to try every happiness and good living guide there is, driven by an acute FOMO (fear of missing out), stop! It’s not quite as hard work as you fear.
Ask yourself: What is missing from your life that you feel you need to chase in all of these places and books, philosophies, and sex positions?
Meaning?
Life has no meaning, nor purpose, darling. It’s for fun. YOU can have a meaning, but your life doesn’t. You can give yourself a meaning. So.
What matters to you?
Babies?
You cannot create meaning in life by creating another meaningless-to-themselves life. You have to sort out your meaning elsewhere first. There needs to be happiness before you bring a child into your misery, expecting them to fix it for you. A lot to ask of a bag of flesh that barely knows its own name yet. ;p What are you even going to tell that child once they’re grown up and depressed, and searching for a meaning if you haven’t figured it out yourself? This model of solving the issue is not a great one. It’s just passing the buck to the next generation to solve.
No. You’re going to solve it for your kids, and you won’t settle for lazy answers.
Raise your bar.
Realistic goals are a spirit killer, especially if you define “realistic” as “what I should easily achieve.” They’re not very motivating. Once you reach an easily achievable goal, you’ll still feel flat, don’t you? If you fail achieving a realistic goal because you’re just not freaking motivated to, you’ll feel twice as crappy.
Fuck realistic goals!
Find a goal that is SO DELICIOUS you can’t stop thinking about it. Find something stupidly exciting, ambitious, weird, wonderful, whatever get your juices flowing again.
You don’t have to do anything for anybody else, you can have as much fun as you like – just try not to be a problem to someone else, and KNOW that not everyone will love your goal, but the right people will… ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT.
Jot down your favorite things.
That said, it doesn’t have to be that complicated. Sometimes happiness is a very simple thing. Kids, even, to be fair, but they are not even the start of an answer for all people.
Write a list of your favorite things, your obsessions. Anything you’ve EVER loved doing, since you were a child. Your favorite toys, games, hobbies. All the way to this day.
Now. What’s in common to all of these things? What is their mutual point? Keep your answer as short as possible. It only needs to make sense to you.
For more detailed help on this, grab your copy of Laura Carroll’s Finding Fulfilment Inside Out.
I’ll give you a hint, tho.
Feeling you have a meaning in life is ALWAYS about making someone else’s life a little better.
The question is, how are you going to do it? Who is important enough for you to do it for? What group of people matters to you?
Never allow anyone to pacify you so that you don’t need to care about anybody in your life. Even if the only way you make others happy is sex. ;p
