Tool 1 — Make true happiness your highest priority
It’s important for you to know I’m just a regular-ass person. I was born in Central Texas, grew up in a small, middle-class family, studied software engineering, and now I work at a tech company. I’ve been dating an amazing girl for 7 years. Our standard Friday night is cooking and watching the Great British Baking Show.
There’s no motive in sharing my thoughts about happiness other than wanting to help the people around me that I see struggling to find meaning in their lives. Learning about happiness is a rabbit hole I went down and this book is what came out on the other side.
I need you to know this because the journey to true happiness we’re about to dive into is not meant to be an expert’s playbook. In fact anyone who tries to tell you they have “the steps” to achieving happiness almost guarantees them a snake oil salesperson. That’s why I avoid using the word “the” because no list on this topic can be finite. Unfortunately there can be no set-in-stone checklist to reaching this goal because it’s complexity is infinite. We each have different starting points in life, different genetic predispositions, different personalities, intelligence levels, etc. Each journey to true happiness is completely different.
But there are several universal practices that have wide ranging applications. This section is called “Tools” for True Happiness because although they aren’t step-by-step recipes for happiness, they are essential ingredients. Some of you may want to apply all of these to your life, others may just apply a couple. What I can guarantee is these tools will help you think about your journey differently, and even provide inspiration to make necessary life changes. Think about these five principles and use them as fuel. Take what you need, and apply them to your uniquely complex path to true happiness.
Our first tool is an extension of Part 1. The best place to start is to make true happiness your highest priority goal. The word “priority” is important here. It means we don’t need to drop everything in our lives to chase this goal. You don’t need to walk into your corporate job tomorrow, middle fingers raised, throw your Mac at the wall, and then move to Tibet to become a monk. This is simply an affirmation that achieving true happiness is the most important thing in your life. More important than money, than your career, than finishing Breaking Bad on Netflix — if this reference is dated by now just substitute “Breaking Bad” with whatever people are binging these days.
Why should happiness be our top priority? Recall that life is existence, and to exist we must have the motivation to further our lives. True happiness is the purest and most powerful state of pleasure, and therefore it provides the highest level of motivation to further one’s life. This motivation is driven by the full acceptance of one’s self and one’s life, and by having the greatest magnitude of love of one’s self and one’s life.
If once again this rationality sounds too much like I eat rainbows and LSD for breakfast I’ll put it more simply. People who care about a thing will be motivated to protect that thing. People who hate a thing will be motivated to destroy that thing. If our most basic (i.e important) goal is to keep living, then we need to care about ourselves in order to do so. Happiness is a damn good motivation to care about life.
Something we’ll dive into later is the fact that there’s so many other things that provide motivation and that lead to a higher quality life. Wealth, love (i.e. friends and family), and success are the most common examples. Surely having money to live comfortably provides us with a better life than not having enough to buy food? And we need loving friends and family to give us support right? And don’t forget success can make us feel proud so doesn’t that also motivate us to further life?
Basically these questions come down to why does true happiness get the highest priority when there are plenty of other things that contribute to a better life?
Most simply, happiness is more valuable and more intangible than any worldly concept. Unlike wealth, love, success, and just about anything else, true happiness, once achieved, conceptually cannot incrementally increase in value. Wealth for example realistically has no limit. When you achieve a certain level of it, there’s essentially always more to be achieved. Because of this limitless nature it’s value is relative to what the owner already has. For example a homeless person values $20 much more than a billionaire values $20. The more wealth you gain, the less meaningful it’s value becomes.
Also the tangibility of these things make them exchangeable with each other. One can exchange time and effort for success. They can then exchange success for wealth, and then exchange wealth to have many friends present at a party.
It’s very true that one needs wealth, love, and success mixed together with many other things to achieve true happiness. However this is not an exchange. Happiness cannot be bartered for, nor given away once gained. It’s value is internal, meaning it can only be experienced by the holder. Most other objects have external value which can be bought or exchanged.
Picture the average monk versus the average rockstar. They both have things that the other (likely) does not. The rockstar has piles of cash, millions of loving fans, and an enormously successful career. The monk has no money, but has self-love and self-acceptance. The rockstar can easily give away what’s been gained. The monk cannot do the same.
The bottom line is that happiness is more important because it does not lose value once gained, because it is intangible, and because it provides the highest level of motivation to further life. Money, love, and success are all very important means to a happy ending. But true happiness is a happy ending in itself. One of the all-time most beautiful quotes says something similar.
In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the final scene describes Mr. Wonka showing Charlie one last part of his factory. An elevator that can go anywhere in the world. As they ride off into the horizon together, Mr. Wonka tells Charlie his desire to hand over the factory to the boy and his family. Charlie’s head is probably racing at this point as he thinks about all the possibilities that come with this new future. The final thing Mr. Wonka tells him is this.
Mr. Wonka: “Don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted.”
Charlie Bucket: “What happened?”
Mr. Wonka: “He lived happily ever after.”
Who would have thought a movie with little orange people called Oompa Loompas could have such subtle beauty?
It’s not completely clear whether “the man” in this line refers to Wonka or Charlie, but it’s very likely referring to both. Wonka got what he wanted in naming a worthy successor so he could break free from the lonely confines of the factory, and Charlie inherited an estate that his impoverished family could now live comfortably in.
But “everything he wanted” is the key part of the quote. Wonka and Charlie were the only main characters who were without materialistic motives. They were the juxtaposition of the greedy overindulgence everyone else embodied. Even Charlie’s sketchy Grandpa wanted to steal one of the factory’s secret recipes (by the way if you ever want a good laugh just Google “fuck Grandpa Joe”).
The two outsiders of the story, Wonka and Charlie, were instead motivated by desires to live more happy and fulfilling lives. When the end goal (i.e. everything one wants) is true happiness and it gets achieved, then that is simply a happily ever after ending. There is relatively not much more to be gained.
One can always gain more wealth, more friends, and more success. This makes it difficult if not impossible to define an end goal in terms of these things. What numbers will you set (i.e. $10 million dollars, a thousand friends, or executive at a fortune 500 company)? And what happens when you surpass these goals? Setting end goals in terms of things that don’t have an end is just one reason why many wealthy and successful people are miserable. They reach goals that many are never able to reach, yet something still feels missing.
True happiness on the other hand is binary. One is either in this state, or not. And when reached there is nothing which feels missing because, by our definition, it is a state of full acceptance of one’s life. That’s what it means for our most important goal to be an end rather than a means to an end.
So Charlie Bucket can now feel fully fulfilled and spend his happily ever after removing his grandparents from that creepy four-person bed they live in. Something that we can all surely relate to.
Realizing and affirming that true happiness is your highest priority goal will help you execute the other tools. It will serve as an emblem to look back on when anything tries to knock you off the path of living your best life. To wrap this up let’s internalize this decision together. Wherever you are right now — indoors, outdoors, your bedroom, the subway, an airplane — I want you to close your eyes and spend a few moments thinking about why achieving true happiness is important to you. Don’t focus on the how just yet, only the why. When you’re ready say the following out loud three times in a row:
“True happiness is now my highest priority.”
I’m kidding you don’t need to say it out loud. I just wanted to see if anyone would do it in a crowded place. Was anyone waiting in line at a Starbucks or something?
But seriously: do whatever feels right for you to internalize this because the tools in this section are organized from simple to complex, from foundational to surface-level. What’s interesting about this first one is that although it’s the most simple to understand, so many people never truly grasp it’s significance. These people will see life as a game where material objects hold the highest value. It’s a game that can never be won because these objects are infinite. Their lives will be an endless effort, whereas those who value happiness over everything will have purpose. Don’t run on a hamster wheel when it’s more fulfilling to run a marathon.
One last thing which needs to be clarified: making happiness your highest priority should not result in any pressure to fake happiness. This tool is about creating an intent to start a journey, not flaunting the end goal. Realize this is a long, difficult journey. One that isn’t completed by forcing yourself to feel or act happy.
The pressure to fake it comes from assumptions that being happy means walking around 24/7 with a big goofy smile ala the opening scene of The Truman Show. Our perfect state cannot always be seen externally. Recall we’re talking about a feeling of full self-acceptance, and this doesn’t always get translated to big smiles and endless chuckles.
Another aspect of true happiness to recall is that it can, and almost certainly will, come and go. Even when achieved we have to be prepared for this. Because of the complexities of both human nature and the concept of happiness itself, we cannot expect to always be in one state. The human experience is to consistently encounter all emotions. Happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear, love. No matter what stage of the journey you find yourself in, all these emotional states will be common.
I guess what I mean is: relax! I know you want to reach the end of this journey, but always remember it’s not a race. Every single person will have a different path with a different timeline. Your path is unique so learn to embrace it, not fake it. You’ll know when true happiness is achieved, it will be glorious, so no need to force anything.
