Your 3 Minute Guide to Happiness — to Read (Again) When You Feel Lost and Afraid

You have needs. A lot of needs. And you have to regularly fulfil those needs.

You don’t breathe enough to last forever, nor do you eat enough either. You certainly don’t love enough to last forever.

All our needs — food, drink, air, love, intimacy — must be fulfilled regularly.

This is your life.

The problem is, many of us live with the anxiety of one day losing that which fulfils our needs:

• My job that provides me security today, I may lose tomorrow.
• My attractiveness that brings me attention will eventually fade.
• My creativity or intelligence that engages me will one day extinguish.
• My partner who loves me now will no longer love me in the future.

And we cling to the object that fulfils that need:

• We make the job our identity, it becomes who we are.
• We mask signs of ageing, with skin care and hair products.
• We hold onto transient features that make us feel valued and don’t let go.
• We try to make our lover love us.

We become shackled to people and objects. When our only means of feeling valued are our looks, money and intelligence, we become prisoners to our appearance, bank account and productivity.

If we feel like our lover is the only person who can make us feel valued, we hold onto them with all our affections, binding ourselves to them. It sounds like this:

“What is life worth living without you?”

“I just can’t imagine a future without you.”

Thing is, we mistake that which provides for our needs for the needs themselves:

• You don’t need your lover. You need to feel loved.
• You don’t need your job. You need to feel secure.
• You don’t need to be popular. You need to feel valued.

All these needs are met in many ways. All you need is confidence in your ability to meet your needs:

• Your lover, she may leave you, whether by death or by betrayal. But there will eventually be another.
• That job, you may get fired. But there will be another opportunity.
• Your status or appearance or popularity or relevance may fade, but there are always more ways to feel valued.

Studies show that people who become paraplegics are no less happy than anyone else. Our minds always find a way to have our needs met.

Now, I have a question for you.

What if you woke up tomorrow with nothing? Bankruptcy, war, pandemic — doesn’t matter what happened. You have no family, no friends, no partner, no home, no money.

You’d be devastated, right?

I don’t know what I’d do to get money that first day. I’d be hungry, cold and tired. And I know it would be difficult and sad and lonely for a very long time.

I also know I would eventually be fine. I would cry and struggle. But I would stop crying. I would keep going. And eventually I would be fine. If everything was taken away from me, while I would mourn my loss, I would live on. I would be okay.

You have no agency over your circumstances — only on how you react to it.

Happiness is not preventing loss in your life. Happiness is learning to adapt to them.

It’s not the people and objects that fulfil the needs in your life that make you happy.

You make you happy.

Your future hasn’t been written yet. So make sure it’s a good one.