How to Be a Genuinely Happy Person
What is happiness? And, how do we find it? These are fundamental questions, and deserve a thorough answer. So that’s what today’s episode–and corresponding blog post–are about.
How to Be a Genuinely Happy Person
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How to Be a Genuinely Happy Person
Today I spent a good deal of time talking happiness with two of my friends. But before we get into it, let me say this. Most it would seem have a very strange view of happiness. They tend to think of happiness as some “thing”—like success or self-esteem or a lower scale weight or something. But I don’t think that is a very good definition of happiness. Because I used to think of happiness that way, and it never did me any good.
I used to think happiness would come after my first pull up. Then I thought happiness would come from a book deal—because obviously anybody’s who’s been published couldn’t be unhappy, right? Then I thought happiness would come from owning a business and being successful that way. Then I thought happiness would come from a second book deal and, well, you get the point.
Sure, there were parts that were fun to all of this, and other parts that gratified the ego and caused me to put my chin up, but ultimately these efforts were, in themselves, very unsatisfactory. The publicity, the fancy car, the likes and follows, none of that has anything to do with happiness. I can tell you from experience.
So with my new book, I knew I needed to re-evaluate. I couldn’t just write on success, because success I had, but happiness I hadn’t–at least not completely. Really, I had to get at the heart of the matter. I had to understand what it meant to truly be happy.
Here’s what I discovered: Happiness is not a thing to get but rather the things you do. Because happiness is the enjoyment of, and engagement in, a genuinely good activity. A genuinely good activity? Yes. That is, any activity that has good effects, is done for good reasons, is done in a good way, and is done in good conscience.
In other words, if you want to be happy, then outcomes, intentions, effectiveness, and moral sense all matter. Should anything violate these criteria, then it is not a genuinely good activity (it may still be a partially good activity) and will fail to make you totally happy.
This is a high criteria. The upside to all of this? Well, that happiness is equally available to us all. Because being rich or famous or getting a book deal, none of that is *technically* happiness. Happiness is found within the decisions and actions of normal, daily life. You become happy be doing genuinely good activities, which, in turn, makes you a genuinely good person.
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