This essay is cross-posted from the Clearer Thinking blog.
The question of how to achieve true happiness has been debated for thousands of years. In this article, we’ve summarized ten approaches to happiness, new and old, that are popular today.
How do you think about being truly happy?
You might find that your personal views on this topic are captured by one of these ten popular theories. We hope that understanding these different theories will help you to better refine your own views of happiness and understand the perspectives that other people take towards living a good life!
For each of these theories, there are lots of different variants with subtle differences – we’ve aimed to capture some central representative ideas that many variants have in common.
We’ve also included some resources you can use to try and increase your happiness levels by applying these different methodologies!
π₯° Positive Psychology
A growing scientific field, positive psychology applies the tools of psychology to the question of what makes life most worth living.
“Gratitude is an antidote to negative emotions, a neutralizer of envy, hostility, worry, and irritation. It is savoring; it is not taking things for granted; it is present-oriented.”
-Sonja Lyubomirsky
How to achieve true happiness: Keep a gratitude list, cultivate positive relationships, find ways to use your strengths/virtues, do activities that get you into a flow state, savor pleasurable things in the moment, anticipate fun things in your future, reminisce about meaningful things in your past, buy more experiences and fewer things, avoid the hedonic treadmill.
Useful Clearer Thinking tools:
Other resources:
π Stoicism
Stoicism is an ancient school of philosophical thought from 3rd Century BC Greece and Rome, which is now experiencing a resurgence in popularity.
“Choose not to be harmed β and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed β and you haven’t been.”
β Marcus Aurelius
How to achieve true happiness: Deeply appreciate what you have now since it all could be gone tomorrow, only try to control what you’re actually able to, remember you’re not entitled to anything, learn to love doing the right thing rather than the pleasant thing, seek value in all that happens. Through these practices, aim for equanimity in the face of any circumstance, no matter how bad.
Useful Clearer Thinking tools:
Books:
βͺ Christianity
Based on biblical scripture and church traditions, many practitioners of Christianity view it as including rules and guidelines for living a good and happy life.
“The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water.”
– C.S. Lewis
How to achieve true happiness: Be humble, love God with all your heart, love your neighbor, accept Jesus Christ as your savior, worship God, pray, have faith, be thankful and take joy each day in all that God has given you, be a devoted wife/husband/father/mother/child, obey the Ten Commandments, don’t cast the first stone, avoid lust, greed, wrath, sloth, gluttony, envy, and pride, avoid hell at all costs, live for eternity in heaven with God.
Books:
π§ββοΈ Insight Meditation
VipassanΔ, or insight meditation, is a Buddhist practice popular before the 10th Century AD, which gained widespread popularity in the late 20th Century, including in the USA. This practice emphasizes mindfulness meditation as a path to gaining insights into the nature of reality.
“As the fletcher whittles and makes straight his arrows, so the master directs his straying thoughts.”
– Buddha
How to achieve true happiness: Follow the eightfold path, train your concentration through meditation until it is stable and precise (e.g., practice maintaining subtle focus on the breath), use your refined concentration to carefully observe the true nature of reality, mind, and self, realize the three marks of existence (impermanence, dissatisfaction, non-self), learn to stabilize your new experience of reality, become free from craving and aversion.
Books:
- The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation as Taught by S. N. Goenka – William Hart
- Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha: An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book – Daniel M Ingram
Other resources:
π¨βπ©βπ§βπ¦ Traditional
This set of values may strike you as a familiar blueprint to a traditionally good life.
“The great Error of our Nature is, not to know where to stop, not to be satisfied with any reasonable Acquirement; not to compound with our Condition; but to lose all we have gained by an insatiable Pursuit after more.”
– Edmund Burke
How to achieve true happiness: Work hard, marry a good person, have multiple children, spend time with family, fit into your role, remember that many others have it worse than you, don’t complain, avoid vices (gambling, excessive drinking, drugs), don’t waste money, achieve stability in life.
Useful Clearer Thinking tools:
π΄ββοΈ Common sense
A common-sense approach to happiness focuses on meeting all your needs and making sure you have stable sources of fulfillment. No surprises here!
“Philosophy is common sense with big words.”
– James Madison
How to achieve true happiness: Sleep enough, eat healthy food, exercise, spend your time with people you like, have a pet, seek work that’s enjoyable/challenging/meaningful, make sure your basic needs are met, try to make enough money to achieve financial security, save for retirement, marry someone you love who treats you well, have a fun hobby.
Useful Clearer Thinking tools:
Other resources:
π Introspection
Introspective theories say that the path to true happiness is through truly understanding yourself, healing your past trauma, and being authentic with others.
“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
– C.G. Jung
How to achieve true happiness: Use psychedelics for self-exploration, listen to and get in touch with your body, engage in self-care and self-compassion, investigate and heal your trauma, find a daily practice that works for you (e.g., meditation/yoga/prayer), be vulnerable around the people that you trust, share your true feelings, explore and have compassion for the different “parts” of yourself that are afraid of and desire different things, investigate your “true self” and be true to it, learn to pay attention to your intuition, find a way to look at the world that resonates with you.
Useful Clearer Thinking tools:
Books:
- The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma – Bessel van der Kolk
- Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself – Kristin Neff
Other resources:
- How many minds do you have? (Podcast episode)
- The 10 Most Important Components of Self-Compassion
- Could You Be in One of These 8 Psychological Traps?
- How to Communicate Better with the People in Your Life (podcast episode)
- Exploring your Shadow and Healing your Traumas (podcast episode)
β Self-help books
Books advocating techniques for self-improvement have exploded in popularity since the mid 20th Century. Each takes a different angle on how to be happy – here, we have collected some common themes.
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
-Thomas Edison
How to achieve true happiness: Repeat affirmations that motivate you, form healthy daily habits, always work on becoming a better version of yourself, try new things, figure out what you really want and then plan to get it, prioritize, set ambitious goals, keep your home organized, think positive thoughts, believe you can do anything that you put your mind to, wake up early, make at least a little progress towards your goals each day, don’t let fear stop you, don’t give up, avoid negative people, surround yourself with people who inspire you and make you a better person.
Useful Clearer Thinking tools:
- Daily Ritual: A Habit Creation System
- Design Your Own Self-Experiment
- Achieve Your Goals
- Get Going: Overcome Procrastination
Books:
Other resources:
- How to Achieve Self-Control Without Self-Control
- How to Hack Your Own Brain (podcast episode)
- The Secrets of Effective Learning (podcast episode)
- By the Book (podcast)
π Hedonism
As an approach to life, hedonism is all about doing whatever you can to experience pleasure and avoid pain.
“Don’t worry. Be happy.”
– Bobby McFerrin
How to achieve true happiness: Remember that you get just one life, so you might as well enjoy it, live in the moment (don’t worry about the future), dance, party, seek out cool experiences, do exactly what you feel like, ignore societal pressure, have sex, eat tasty food, do fun drugs, spend money on fun things, don’t let others tell you what to do.
Useful Clearer Thinking tools:
Other resources:
- Atlas Obscura – Curious and Wondrous Destinations
- Happiness and Hedonic Adaptation (podcast episode)
- When is Suffering Good? (podcast episode)
β€ Altruism
An altruistic approach to happiness is about devoting yourself to helping others and making the world a better place – the theory says you can gain fulfillment through knowing that other people are better off thanks to your efforts.
“The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”
– Nelson Henderson
How to achieve true happiness: Give to charity, volunteer your time, choose a career that lets you help others, become a part of something meaningful (e.g., a cause or movement) that is much bigger than yourself, work hard to be kind, generous, and thoughtful, think hard about how you can do good, help strangers, build communities and projects to improve the world.
Useful Clearer Thinking tools:
- Leaving Your Mark on the World
- Charity Effectiveness Test
- Change Behaviour for the Better
- What Causes Match Your Values?
Books:
- Strangers Drowning: Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help – Larissa MacFarquhar
- Doing Good Better – William MacAskill
Other resources:
Which of these theories resonates most with you?
It might be challenging to decide whether and how to apply each of these different theories of happiness. An experimental approach could be useful – you could explore the resources we’ve linked above, try applying some of the techniques, and see which theories deliver on their promise of true happiness for you.
We hope that exploring these theories has helped you conceptualize your own approach to happiness. Which theories of happiness have you lived by previously? How did you choose them, or did you pick them up unconsciously from your environment? How could you tweak these theories, combine them with other schools of thought, or replace parts that are unhelpful for you? What other theories of happiness do people live by?
A big thank you goes to Adam Binks for his help with this post!
Note: To help fund the free decision-making tools and programs that we provide, ClearerThinking.org is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program (an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com). If you buy a book using the links in this article, you’ll be supporting ClearerThinking.org in its mission to make free tools that help the world make better decisions.
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