😁 TREE 523: The secret to happiness 1

Jeff Gill

Feb 06, 2023

The Sentient Marmalade1 of Wisdom says:

The secret to happiness is there is no secret.

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Want to be healthy? Eat a balanced diet of minimally processed foods. Be physically active.

Want to feel like you belong? Have some meaningful friendships.

Want life to have meaning? Find an intersection between a genuine need, what you love doing and what you are good at.

And so on, from the big and existential to the small and practical, the human species knows how to thrive. The knowledge is immediately accessible via the supercomputer in your pocket.

So why do humans spend so much time not thriving?

Moving from not thriving to thriving in any area, no matter how small, requires change. Change is hard, so you avoid it, and you carry on not thriving even though you know exactly how to thrive.

I’ve got two things you can do to make change less avoidable. I’ll share the first today, the second tomorrow. And the day after: what if you really don’t know how to thrive?

First thing: changing your behaviour is hard. Changing your environment is easier, so change your environment to make it easier to thrive than to not thrive.

Do you want to eat better? Change your shopping. If your kitchen is full of healthy food instead of biscuits, it’s hard to eat biscuits. Not buying biscuits is much easier than not eating biscuits.

Do you want to do a project? Make yourself accountable to someone so the pressure you feel is toward action.

Are you unhappy about something in your life? Change your environment so it’s harder to stay the same than it is to change.