Small things. Sounds. The temperature of the air. The fact that my side isn’t hurting right now. The kids costumes who were just trick or treating at my house.
I really love seeing a well curated list, and that’s a well curated list.
if only our lives were the only thing we focused on
I was just about to write “by lowering the bar”, but I like your version more.
still on the topic of small things that bring happiness: coffee in the morning, listening the air on the trees, the birds, nature in general, food (good food, not processed, made by you) good friends, good talks, walks.
Happiness is fleeting, like other emotions, it comes and goes. Focusing on it is like chasing a wave.
Understanding your own values and what you find meaningful is essential for moving through life, because we’re not in control. Stuff happens, and we get to deal with it.
You don’t find happiness. It comes and goes. Imagine being happy all the time; it would just become normal. You need non happy times to appreciate the happy times.
As someone that is either very happy or very sad, I find happiness in my hobbies. I need my mind to be occupied to pass the time, but then there is the thought I’m just waiting to die and passing time.
Hobbies that make me happy are:
- Indoor bouldering (rock climbing) is the only thing I’ve found that lets me escape the constant train of thought and be in the moment. It’s a nerdy hobby as lots of problem solving mixed with strength training.
- Running
- Rubiks cube
- Lego
- Cross stitch
- Paint by numbers
- 3D printing
- learning
- many more but this is getting long.
As someone who is down a lot of the time and has ADHD but stopped the meds as the side affects were worse than living with ADHD; I’ve found that routine is a massive thing required to be content with life. Consistent bed time and wake time. I am not a morning person but after 18 months of waking at 07:30 or 06:00, depending on if I’m taking the train to work, that I now wake up a few minutes before my alarm quite often; I’m still tired and I hate it but it gets easier.
Spending time with other people is key too. I find if I’m down it’s usually cause I’ve been alone a lot (which I love) and that can be bad for me so I’ll go see friends even if I don’t want to just to engage.
Luckily I can spot when I’m spiralling. I have an urge to fire up Minecraft and live vicariously through Steve and shut out the world.
Eating people. Eating family and friends, eating vagrants, eating the needy. Some people can even taste the camaraderie of the people they work with.
It comes down to eating people and if you have trouble just eat people. You know what they say hungry people eat people.
by not trying to compare themselves to anyone else
Kind of surprised no one has mentioned it… But kids. Kids bring a lot of happiness.
It depends.
For a lot of adults, I would agree that they are a bright point in their lives. But it isn’t universal.
Yep, just like how every single other answer in this thread isn’t universal.
Yep, they’re stressful too – but it’s usually the good kind of stress (exhaustion) and not the bad one (uncertainty). Although that pivots once they hit their teens.
Ehh, they have knock-on uncertainties. Especially if you are financially hurting.
They bring happiness, and a lot of other things too.
Basically everyone I’ve talked to in my age range that has kids basically has Stockholm syndrome, but I guess there are also enough people that do intrinsically enjoy having kids.
Kids can also completely ruin marriages. I know multiple people who have straight up told me “my marriage used to be great and then having kids ruined it.” Of course kids can also bring tons of happiness! But it’s not universal.
I guess that’s one perspective. Another one might be that their marriage wasn’t as great as they thought it was in the first place.
Kids are stressful, no argument there. But blaming kids because their marriage buckled under the added stress just feels like an easy excuse. I suspect there were deeper issues that those people weren’t particularly interested in exploring.
Yea that’s definitely possible. I completely agree. But some people just have like a stress cap, ya know? It can put you over. There are definitely multiple reasons why it could happen.
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Happiness is not found. It’s not an object, rather a state of perception. The more you’ll objectify and discretize happiness, the less likely you’re to achieve it.
That being said, usually drugs.
On a serious note, two books helped me to understand this mystery a bit more
- Zen Mind, beginner’s mind by S. Suzuki
- Flow: the psychology of optimal experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
By finding not happiness, but contentment. As you get older, you learn that to be happy, you have to be content.
knowlege avails many things, but not happiness…
Find your thing.
For me that’s been different things as I’ve gone through life. Currently in my 50s and enjoying riding a motorbike at weekends. When I’d ridden all the local roads so many times it was starting to get boring, I added another layer and am now riding my bike to every Village in my county. It’s going to take a while, but has given another layer of interest and purpose. Many people won’t understand why it’s interesting to me, and that’s fine, they don’t have to. Finding what works for you is half the challenge.
BTW, if you’ve got depression, then finding happiness without resolving that is really, really difficult. Been there and absolutely everything felt bleak and pointless. Fixing that is the first step.
A few years ago, my wife and I left the Mormon church. That helped a lot. Along that line coffee makes me happy.
Contentment is easier to find than happiness
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That’s the neat part,
i tried checking at walmart, but they haven’t carried it since the early 1970s
Yeah. They do still sell Frisbees, though, at least.
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