Happiness is a chimera: it is imaginary and deceiving in many of its forms.
Learn to desire what you already have, and you will have all you need.
‘Get rid of the judgment, get rid of the “I am hurt,” you are rid of the hurt itself’.
A more primitive life, on the other hand, leads to fewer desires, which means less frustration and therefore more happiness.
Epicureans lived a simple, ascetic life, believing that by limiting themselves to a few natural desires (such as friendship, bread and water), they would be far happier than those who finally bring pain upon themselves through entertaining greater needs.
If we change our attitude, the pain of those external factors can disappear.
Any number of situations arise where the power of ” it’s fine” can make itself felt.
The feeling of letting them go, things are that do not fall under our control is enormously liberating, so we want to make sure we can confidently reap the benefits.
Stoic route to valuing things is to accept that whether they come or go from our lives is not under our control.
The vast majority of us are drawn to basic qualities such as warmth and openness.
On Self Validation
People who prioritize impressing people rather than letting themselves be impressed by others make it hard for those others to like them.
There will always be people and events that get in the way of our plans. Thus we should not get too attached to our ambitions.
We make two common mistakes when we try to be liked: we either try to impress or we try to be like the other person.
Resist the impulse to be curious. The man who tries to find out what has been said against him, who seeks to unearth spiteful gossip, even when engaged in privately, is destroying his own peace of mind.
We are looking to tie our well-being to our own actions, not those of others.
Expressing our unhappiness in a sensitive way is one of the most productive things we can do in a relationship.
‘When anger is present, neither marriage nor friendship is endurable; but when anger is absent, even drunkenness is no burden.’
‘You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realise how seldom they do.’
Do not seek to have events happen to you as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well.
Be the best you can be at what you are. Engage & inspire.
We may aim high but fate will do its own thing.
We can’t blame others for doing what we would most likely have done if we found ourselves in the same circumstances.
When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it.
Much of this book concerns the value of understanding that distinction- we’re switching our focus to removing needless frustrations, not chasing happiness.
We play only peripheral parts in the lives of our friends. They are the chief protagonists of their own dramas; to them, we are merely supporting cast.
On Riches
The belief that we would be extremely happy if we were extremely rich is so widespread that it’s worth repeating: after the point of being financially comfortable, more money does not make you happier.
Money, fame and success nice to have, but outside of our jurisdiction. They may be rewarding by-products, but they will never prove gratifying if they are chased directly.
The accumulation of riches and popularity effectively distracts us from the fact that at some point we must give it all up and leave this Earth.
Palaces are most beautiful when viewed from afar, and stars shine most brightly from a distance.
Shifting our expectations to work with reality, reminding ourselves that things may not work out as we expect, that we may lose the things we value, that things come and go: all this we know is to aim for a kind of tranquillity.
Bronnie Ware, an Australian nurse working in palliative care, recorded what she perceived to be the top five regrets of the dying. They were: I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
One survey tells us we watch television for four times longer than we spend talking to people, and twenty times longer than we engage in religious activities, although we report that communication, worship and meditation make us far happier than TV.
If you work in a creative field, and you are faced with a choice of doing a job for the money or doing a job for the fun of it, take the fun one whenever you can. You’ll rarely enjoy the work you do for money.
We should live in the present while we plan for the future.
On Relationships
In matters of love, a mature relationship involves celebrating the mystery and wholeness of one’s partner.
It is realizing that we are each of us alone, that no one is ever entirely right for us because we are all broken, and that we can only open our broken aloneness to that of another.
Lowering our expectations of the people around us is not to live at their whim and let them ‘get away with anything’; it is to stop obtruding our stories and priorities upon those of others and then whining when they don’t match up.
Anger is just proof of how unrealistic your expectations were.
