What is happiness?

After reading both parts of my answer the her question about ungrateful family (Part 1 and Part 2), M. said: I guess I am "love starved" to a point and therefore, I am a people pleaser and care too much what others think. How can I stop this? I want to become tough.

It is not about becoming tough... It is about becoming relaxed.


Is the full love jug the same as the happiness?

What is happiness? 

Happiness is not a constant euphoric state. Even the manic patients can maintain euphoria only for some limited time. It requires a lot of energy. The body will not provide you with that much energy for euphoria because it will be spent very quickly and it will be a way to a soon and certain death.

The opposite of happiness is fear. Constant fear is also very energy draining. But strangely it requires less energy than euphoria.

Is happiness absence of fear?

What is in the middle between euphoria and fear? 
It is the comfort. 
Euphoria, comfort and fear and connected on a spectrum.

If euphoria is white color and fear is black color, then comfort is gray. Since it is a spectrum, there are very many shades of that gray color. And according to the number of your fears you will be closer to one or another end of the spectrum.

It is nice to settle in the light gray area. It is not energy draining euphoria and not the blackness of fear.

Based on this color representation, the move toward light gray means reduction of fears.

What fears do most people have?
Fear of judgment, fear of disease, fear of financial instability, or fear of death. And many others.

The primary fear is the physical. It has to do with preservation of the body. 
This fears includes fear of becoming sick, weak, being injured or incapacitated and not being able to physically take care of yourself. 

The less financial resources you have to take care of the body needs, the more you will depend on people around you. You will have to be liked by others because if you need their help, they will only help you if they like you. 

The more financial resources you have the less you need friends who will have to help you for free. It sounds harsh but it is true.  
Financial abundance will turn food into high quality food and place to stay will turn into a warm, dry and comfortable home.

Preventing of accident will be possible to some degree, like bying a safer and bigger car with modern safety features.

Taking care of the aging body is also easier with money, the aging body will not need to work as hard at the job when the time comes. You can retire early and stop wearing yourself out at work.

It is interesting how it all comes to money.

The more money you have the safer you feel. Because all the fears related to the body preservation from the above list can be taken care of.
And the stealth money is best, because it will not attract anyone who might be danger for your body (for exapmle kidnapping).


What about the other type of fears like fear of judgment by others? Is it a separate category? 
It just looks like it is separate. I think, it is still a derivative of the body preservation fears.

People live in groups (societies), because for someone alone it will be almost impossible to take care of the body preservation. Even in tribes the jobs are divided - some hunt, some cook, some watch children and some give directions (chief and his "spiritual adviser/shaman").
The more the society develops, the more different jobs there will be. And everyone doing a job will be rewarded with a monetary equivalent for their contribution.

Someone separated from this group has a very little chance to survive.

People in the society pick their jobs according to their abilities and their own degree of fear they have for their body.

Those individuals who try to be very successful have very high level of fear. The average protection is not enough for them. They need more.


The further away you are from you own financial safety level, the more you feel dependent on others.

If you don't have your own resources and the situation comes, you will have to ask others for the resources you don't have. Consequently you have to be liked by them, or no one will give you any resources.

The families in the third worlds countries are bigger because with absent financial comfort they depend on other people's help. The poorer you are - the more "friends" you need.

It looks like behind all body preservation fears and the fear of judgment is actually the worry about availability of resources.

Money is the universal representation of resources. The more money you have the more resources will be accessible to you.

If all that really works how I just described above, then happiness is the derivative of money.

What is your magic number to stop worrying?
Let's say it is $3 millions?
How much do you have right now?
If you have half of that or $1,500,000, you are already more happy then when you only had $500,000.
And you will be more happy when you reach the number. 

Everyone has their own number. Some need less, some more. If there is someone out there who is truly happy with very limited funds, his levels of fear must be very low. 

It sounds, like you need money to become happy. 

What if it is exactly the opposite?

Like some esoteric teachings suggest that the more happiness you have and the more joyfully you spend money the more money you will get. They say, you can attract money with law of attraction. And in the same way you can attract happiness with law of attraction.
I haven't tried it. If someone did, let me know. You can only be sure that something works, if it produces consistent results. 

What if your financial possibilities are limited? Does it still make sense to work on your happiness or is everything lost? Maybe there are many ways to skin a cat?  


I have two more ideas.
Maybe it just depends on the stage of your brain development? We think that a child goes trough several development stages and after the teen years it is done with all the stages. 
What if there is no stop? And everyone still keeps developing and going trough stages but it is less visible because the body doesn't change that much anymore.
What if everyone has his own speed of the development? And the happiness is just a stage (maybe the end stage) of that development? Like Stanislavsky once said: Everyone can become a great actor. Just some need 5 years and the others more than 100 years. Those will die before they get there.
So everyone can theoretically come to happiness stage if there is enough time in his life. If it is so, many people will never learn what happy is.


But what if it even crazier then that?

What if we really live in a computer simulation. And we do just that what we are supposed to do by the program.

Everything is pre-decided including even your wishes. Including your time of death.
You wish only those things you are programmed to wish and you like those things you are programmed to like.
You are meeting only those people you are supposed to meet. But you feel that it is a real life happening to you.

Where is the place for happiness here? It is accepting everything how it is. Accepting that you are not the author of the program or may be you are but in this reality you are just the player. And after accepting that, just play this game with pleasure. You can stop taking everything so seriously.

Since your death is also pre-programmed, there is no need to fear of flying on a plane, because if you are supposed to crash, you will, and if you are not supposed to, you will not.

If you are supposed to break a leg you will break it and if you are not supposed to, you will not.

The recipe for happiness here is just to accept the game. Game is actually not entirely correct because a game contains choices and free will. It is more like watching a movie, but being one of the actors at the same time.  
Some would ask why did I get this particular scenario? Why am I not some billionaire in this movie or game? But what if there are many levels and many variations of this game? Maybe you will be one in the next.



These were 4 different ideas about happiness. 

The first one is the most practical.
The increasing independence and increasing potential and availability of resources will definitely improve the emotional comfort.

The second, the "law of attraction" way is reserved for those who can't go the first way. They can try to attract money and if that works, they can then join the first way. If that doesn't work, that can try to attract happiness directly...

The last two leave no free will.
You either get there or you don't dependent on how you development speed or if it is in your program at all. 

The last two ways have the highest level of acceptance in them.
And if happiness is acceptance of self completely, the last two are the ways that can lead to happiness too.

If happiness equals reducing the fear, the ways 1, 3 and 4 can work. It feels to me that the 2nd, the esoteric way, is a dead end. The life is not long enough to test all of them.

Since no one can prove any of those ways, why not to take the best of all of them and try.

All you need at the end is a certain level of comfort. You will still live in a society full of other people.
The difference will show when rain drops fall on your face. An unhappy person will complain. The happy one will not care.