Cheers

Some people believe alcohol can make them happier, help them relax, or improve their social experiences. But if they step back, they might realize that drinking gives them a temporary euphoria at best, not the long-lasting happiness they deeply long for.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sober-curiosity/202408/does-alcohol-really-make-us-happier

the banality of pessimism

Enchantment and the courage of joy – René Magritte on the antidote to the banality of pessimism.

https://www.themarginalian.org/2023/05/31/rene-magritte-enchantment/

Happy lessons

This is Robert Waldinger.

The man behind the world's longest-running study on happiness:

This was the famous Harvard's 84-year-old Study of Adult Development.

Here are 7 surprising (life-changing) lessons from the study to help you live a happier life:
(A Thread)🧵

https://www.threads.net/@thecafescrawls/post/C_JBdTRShPk/?xmt=AQGzY_mbO11i_7OgAxyfaBPP_WjOPhZJwoGXsNPutV--uw

How to Be Truly Free: Lessons From a Philosopher President

Pepe Mujica, Uruguay's spartan former president and plain-spoken philosopher, offers wisdom from a rich life as he battles cancer.

... 

(Unprompted.)
I think that humanity, as it's going, is doomed.
Why do you say that?
We waste a lot of time uselessly. We can live more peacefully. Take Uruguay. Uruguay has 3.5 million people. It imports 27 million pairs of shoes. We make garbage and work in pain. For what?
You're free when you escape the law of necessity — when you spend the time of your life on what you desire. If your needs multiply, you spend your life covering those needs.
Humans can create infinite needs. The market dominates us, and it robs us of our lives.
Humanity needs to work less, have more free time and be more grounded. Why so much garbage? Why do you have to change your car? Change the refrigerator?
There is only one life and it ends. You have to give meaning to it. Fight for happiness, not just for wealth.
Do you believe that humanity can change?
It could change. But the market is very strong. It has generated a subliminal culture that dominates our instinct. It's subjective. It's unconscious. It has made us voracious buyers. We live to buy. We work to buy. And we live to pay. Credit is a religion. So we're kind of screwed up...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/23/world/americas/pepe-mujica-uruguay-president.html?smid=em-share

How to Strengthen Your Happiness Muscle

Psychologists call it reward sensitivity. And simple steps can help you boost your drive to seek out positive emotions and enjoy life.

"...sometimes we need to behave like happy people if we actually want to be happy."

nyt

on the side

"Self-knowledge is no guarantee of happiness, but it is on the side of happiness and can supply the courage to fight for it."

— Simone de Beauvoir

https://www.threads.net/@philosophors/post/C-ijek6izak/?xmt=AQGz__74BODiHPrKHSGC5-Bnr3hyD_KgCyqchMdSpPumZQ

happiness isn’t the end-all goal

… The youngest adults, who have been marinating in a positive psychology culture since they left the womb, may be the most deeply affected by the inward shift of the search for happiness. A recent survey from Harvard's Graduate School of Education makes the case that we are, as a culture, overfocusing on the "psychological talk and a self-help culture" that has "caused many people to look inward to find meaning and vitality. Yet the self by itself is a poor source for meaning."

Mr. Sandler told me people ask him all the time whether they should track their emotions and whether it will make them happier. He said he tells them to focus instead on contentment, "the feeling of being satisfied with your life overall."

The frenzied, overstuffed marketplace of happiness optimization will never be able to fix the fundamentals of the human condition or bring a lasting kind of purpose to a new generation. There will never be easy or straightforward answers to our most profound questions of existence, and ranking emotions feels like a diminution of their awesome power. I do not want to spend those daily walks home with my daughter wondering how they stack up against a morning run or dinner with a friend or any other moment in my day that might make me feel something. The user experience of being alive cannot be graphed.

"The biggest thing that I learned throughout all of my happiness range tracking," Mr. Sandler said, "is that happiness isn't the end-all goal that I was looking for."

NYTimes: Are We Happy Yet?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/08/opinion/happiness-tracking-america.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

What the Olympics Can Teach Us About Excellence

"…Excellence is not perfection or winning at all costs. It is a deeply satisfying process of becoming the best performer — and person — you can be. You pursue goals that challenge you, put forth an honest effort, endure highs, lows and everything in between, and gain respect for yourself and others. This sort of excellence isn't just for world-class athletes; it is for all of us. We can certainly find it in sports, but also in the creative arts, medicine, teaching, coaching, science and more.

Understanding that excellence lies in the pursuit of a lofty goal as much as in the achievement of that goal allows us to expand our definition of success. Excellence is a process. That process can, and must, be renewed every day. The real reward for excellence is not the medal or the promotion, but the person you become and the relationships you forge along the way. In 2007, the psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar coined the term "arrival fallacy" to describe the trap of thinking that reaching a goal will bring lasting contentment or fulfillment. Anyone who has ever thought, "If I achieve such-and-such goal, then I'll be happy," understands this..."

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/09/opinion/paris-olympics-gold-excellence.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Off track

"There is a great deal of disagreement on how even to measure happiness and fairly weak evidence that doing so makes us significantly happier," Jessica Grose writes. "Less considered is the question: Could tracking happiness make us feel worse?"

https://www.threads.net/@nytopinion/post/C-a53vrPOmU/?xmt=AQGzoZTkP07442FxL43rUq52DPJjANEzvmXsbgAX0Uc5Fw

Tim Walz, "more than happy"

“Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn, and women are making their own health care decisions, and we’re a top five business state, and we also rank in the top three of happiness…. The fact of the matter is,” where Democratic policies are implemented, “quality of life is higher, the economies are better…educational attainment is better. So yeah, my kids are going to eat here, and you’re going to have a chance to go to college, and you’re going to have an opportunity to live where we're working on reducing carbon emissions. Oh, and by the way, you’re going to have personal incomes that are higher, and you’re going to have health insurance. So if that’s where they want to label me, I’m more than happy to take the label.” HCR