Happiness Comes From Learning, Not Achievement
On learning from new habits and from holding still
The Wisdom Diaries, Week 5: Happiness. This is a series of weekly diary entries with an overarching purpose: transforming intellectual knowledge into embodied wisdom… What does that mean? Basically, I’ve read a lot of books on happiness. I’ve even written one of my own. I could easily write a hundred more articles on how the mind works. But I’m tired of simply talking about theories and not putting them into practice in my own life. So this diary is a personal wisdom training ground. Every week, I’ll reflect on how I can live differently on the basis of what I know intellectually.
“I’d be happy if only I had…”
Over the past 15 years, happiness is the topic I’ve thought about the most. I used to think it was the answer to everything — that if only people understood how to be happy, the world would be a better place. I no longer think things are that simple. But happiness is still a very powerful thing. If only for the reason that most people still have very mistaken views about it.
If I were to caricature the way most people — in modern, Western societies — think about happiness, I’d sum it up in a single phrase: “I’d be happy if only I had [blank]” — where the blank is filled in with…
