To find happiness, you also need to grow the ability to enjoy things. Otherwise, what would be the point in finding happiness if you were unable to enjoy it? You can see this in how many people are doing well, yet are still unhappy. Do you actually know what makes you happy? One modish method towards more happiness is the gratitude journal: every day, you review the situations you encountered that day and note down the pleasant and positive ones. These situations can be major successes, but also small things such as someone smiling at you, a minor accident you managed to avoid, a smooth, incident-free car journey, a view of a beautiful landscape, a good meal. Or that you caught yourself seeing some good in a situation, e.g. some learned lesson, instead of complaining about it as usual. Or that you were so thoughtful to deliberately do something familiar in an unfamiliar way, trying something new, taking a different route to work. Research tends to show that gratitude journals do work. You are not training yourself to be naive, but to shift your outlook on reality to a more positive perspective, counteracting the automatic and often negative ruminations. Keeping a diary is not a goal in itself, but a form of training. A start. Because you may be happy and grateful when writing things down in your diary, but that may be hours or days after the actual situation, which itself you may not have enjoyed. Gradually, this time lag should become smaller. The goal is to be able to enjoy the pleasant situation wholeheartedly while it is happening, not hours later by elaborating some positive interpretation as an intellectual exercise. As long as that doesn't work, happiness is something that always lies in the future, not in the present. But when immediate enjoyment does work, it has the nice side effect of making our outlook on the future more positive. After all, the future will not turn out the way we imagine it any way! So we might as well embellish our present with more pleasant prospects about it. No wonder Russ Harris, one of the best-known authors and trainers of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), wrote a book entitled ‘The Happiness Trap’. So, for one, happiness needs to be practised and may not just happen to us but be a product of a curated awareness of things. However, happiness is not a goal in itself. Happiness consists of moments. A life that consists only of happiness is a bit like having a well-paid job but with no actual activity. You might be happy about it for a while if your previous job was very stressful. But soon enough boredom and bore-out lurk around the corner. Happiness is moments. Life consists of ups and downs. If you want to remove the downs from your life, you will also throw out the ups. It's like in a theme park: you can get on the roller coaster or take the little train. The roller coaster offers intensity and variety. The little train always runs nice and flat. It's the same with life. Perhaps the flattest way to live is depression. But then, we can also contend the minimalistic definition for happiness by Michel de Montaigne, a 16th century figure, as the absence of unhappiness, sorrow and pain. That is not really bliss and ecstasy, but it does not sound so bad either. The search for happiness is like the search for daylight. You still have to go through the nights if you want to see the days. All right, that may sound like a fortune cookie wisdom. What really matters is what we actually do with our time. And more important than the search for happiness is fulfilment. And that comes from trying things honestly, sometimes succeeding, surviving experiences, learning lessons. It comes from doing something ‘meaningful’, whatever that word means for you. For meaningful things, you sometimes have to accept the road through the desert. Good questions to ask yourself when looking for meaning is: • What do I definitely not want to regret on my deathbed for not having experienced, achieved or at least honestly tried it? • What should people remember when I am no longer here? • What should my good name stand for in how people will remember me? The key element is our deep values. By deep values, we don't mean popular hashtags and mainstream buzzwords, but genuine, deep, intimately personal values. They are our inner GPS through life, helping us not to lose ourselves within compliance with peer pressure, groupthink and social norms. Those who recognise these true, deep values within themselves, act by them, and are also prepared to give something up or occasionally pay a price for them, have a good chance of being able to look back on a meaningful life later on. See also: • More blog articles • Coaching for HSP - and what High Sensitivity is • Coaching for the highly gifted • Contact info: Ask your questions or make an appointment • More on Blog & Articles