Happiness summary

You can’t buy happiness. In fact, external factors in general have a limited impact on happiness. Wealth and social status do have some effect on your happiness, but they only account for about 10 to 15 percent of it.

Happiness would be out of reach if it was purely an external phenomenon. After all, our desires know no limits; the amount of control we have over the world, in contrast, is very limited.

Before you can achieve true happiness, you have to understand what it is – and then pinpoint those things that encourage it. But many people start down the wrong path, confusing happiness with other enjoyable emotions, like pleasure.

Pleasure might seem like the fastest and easiest road to happiness, but, sooner or later, you’ll come to a dead end. Pleasure is momentary by nature: it occurs under certain circumstances at a certain time.

In developed countries, about three-quarters of people claim to be satisfied with their quality of life. And yet, levels of unhappiness remain high. Why is this?

The answer has to do with the way people understand what happiness is. A lot of people think happiness is just a momentary respite from suffering. They might feel happy on the weekend because they don’t have to work, for example.

Have you ever felt like everyone around you was self-centered or self-absorbed? Most people put themselves before all else. Buddhism, however, sees such egotism as a source of misery.

The ego causes a lot of problems and conflict with personal identity. To sort this out, Buddhism distinguishes between two “I”s: the natural, instinctive “I” we use when we say “I’m hungry” and the conceptual “I” we imagine but that doesn’t actually exist.

The concepts of identity and status are closely connected to unhappiness. That’s why it’s imperative to detach from your ego.

A person who clings to a specific self-image will do anything to make sure that that image is recognized and accepted. Such a person will devote all their time and energy to seeking validation. Ever worked with someone who spends more time smiling and cracking jokes than doing actual work? Such people are usually overly invested in having their identity praised and accepted.

Thoughts and emotions can be your best friends – but they can also be your worst enemies.

The main sources of pain in our lives often aren’t what we think they are. During war, for example, it’s been shown that depression and suicide rates actually decrease. The most powerful causes of distress are elsewhere. But where?

If you don’t control your own emotions, they might end up controlling you. How can you prevent this?

Buddhism holds that opposite emotions cannot arise at the same instant. We might fluctuate between love and hate, for example, but it’s impossible to feel both for the same person at the same time.