introspection – Spencer Greenberg

Ten theories for how to achieve true happiness (and useful resources for you to try them out)

admin — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 12:46:00 +0000

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!

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:

To be successful, should you focus on your strengths or your weaknesses? (Podcast episode)

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 — and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed — and you haven’t been.”

– 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:

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:

Winning the War in Your Mind: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life – Craig Groeschel

Insight Meditation

Vipassanā, 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:

Other resources:

Waking Up (meditation app)

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:

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:

Choose a fulfilling life path using these five exercises from “Designing Your Life”

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:

Other resources:

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:

Books:

Other resources:

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:

2 Minute Mood Boosters

Other resources:

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:

Books:

Other resources:

Four ways to have a positive impact on the world right now

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.

The ten most important components of self-compassion

admin — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 11:41:00 +0000

Self-compassion is an essential skill – it helps us overcome personal hardship, recognize what we want, and learn how to better support others who are struggling. Inspired by Dr. Kristen Neff’s work on this subject, we’ve put together a list of ten components that we think make up a truly self-compassionate mindset. Regardless of whether or not you try to practice self-compassion in your daily life, this list may be valuable next time you’re finding it difficult to be kind towards yourself.

Self-compassion doesn’t mean being egotistical, ignoring the ways that you have acted poorly, or pitying yourself for the tough situation you might be in. Instead, self-compassion is a way of extending kindness to yourself when you are suffering, are feeling inadequate, or have acted in a way that you regret. There are many different strategies for practicing self-compassion, and some strategies will be easier for you than others. Try some out next time you are feeling low and see which ones are most helpful!

Here are ten of the most valuable components of self-compassion:

(1) Self-friendship: treat yourself at least as well as you would treat a friend who is going through the same situation; taking the outside perspective can often allow us to see the support we truly need from ourselves.

(2) Worthiness: remember that you have value (as all people do) and that your happiness and preferences matter.

(3) Self-talk: notice when you are saying something mean to yourself (aloud or in your head), and rephrase it in a gentler, kinder, more considerate way.

(4) Connectedness: reflect on the fact that, whatever challenge you are facing, others are also facing a similar challenge. You are not alone in your pain.

(5) Change: note that everything changes with time. If you are dealing with feelings that are difficult to stand at this moment, they will subside. This, too, shall pass. Things are usually not as important or permanent as they seem to us at the moment that we are focused on them.

(6) Self-empathy: orient towards yourself with tenderness, understanding, and compassion, especially when you are suffering. Take on the perspective towards yourself that you would towards a child or loved one that was hurting.

(7) Self-acceptance: remember that you, like all people, will always have flaws, and that’s okay. Being imperfect is just part of being human. You can fully accept yourself, flaws and all, and still aim to continuously improve.

(8) Self-patience: note that everyone has their off days, including you. You’ll have times when you mess things up, don’t get anything done, act in ways you regret, and so on. Be patient with yourself, as that usually allows you to move past your struggles more quickly than punishing yourself.

(9) Self-like: remember all the good things about you. Remember your greatest strengths. Remember why other people like and love you. There are good reasons to like yourself, but you may need to actively work to remember them.

(10) Self-observation: notice how you are actually doing (self-compassion meditations can help with this). Carefully observe the difficult thoughts you are having without trying to escape them: what words run through your mind? How exactly do you feel, in your mind and in your body? Being mindful can allow you to understand what you are feeling and wanting in a non-judgmental manner.

Are you already practicing some of these ten components of self-compassion? Which ones could you adopt next time you are struggling to view yourself kindly? If you’re interested in self-compassion, you might want to check out Dr. Kristen Neff’s self-compassion scale, which tests how self-compassionate you are!

This essay was first written on October 20, 2021, for the Clearer Thinking blog. It first appeared on this site on March 4, 2022.

Four tiny parables about starting a company

admin — Sat, 22 Dec 2018 12:48:00 +0000

TLDR: become a looper of questions to know how to program the machine that will polish the stone while you outlast the jungle.

1. Looping the Question

“What don’t I know that I must know?” This Meta Question is your obsession. The answer to that Meta Question is itself a question, and it leads you to create your first data loop (say, conducting a series of interviews with experts). After sucking down much of what it has to teach you, you’re hearing the same answers again and again. Data loops are ephemeral, but this one has served its purpose.

“What don’t I know that I must know?” you ask again. The answer yields your next question, which leads to your next data loop (say, reading many articles). Then that stops being as useful, and you construct your next loop (e.g., conducting a survey) and another (e.g., watching people use your product) and another (e.g., getting criticism from UI experts) and another (e.g., studying the statistics of user behavior) and yet another (e.g., attempting to sell your product at different prices). For each question, you look to the many tools on your tool belt (e.g., user interviews, expert feedback, surveys, A/B tests, analysis of user behavior, etc.) to pick the tool that is most suited for answering it. You are a master asker of questions, an expert looper of the answers.

2. Programming the Machine

You are constructing a machine out of gears. Some parts are made of metal or plastic, but mostly they are made of bits or people. Every month the machine produces a series of outputs, some intermediate, some final. You inspect these carefully.

Do the outputs have the right weight, color, clarity, cost efficiency, quality, quantity? Which part of the machine is bottlenecking the rest? Which part could use lubrication, or gas, or computation, or money, or inspiration? Which part of the machine is grinding to a halt, working against the rest, rotting inside, or about to fly apart? You perform intuitive calculus. What gear has the highest derivative of output with respect to dollars (or hours) of further investment?

As you feed it, the machine keeps growing bigger and more complex. You no longer have a complete understanding of how it operates – nobody does. It has ever more parts that can break, greater momentum which resists changing direction, more fuel needed to move it, more of a mind of its own. You battle the exploding complexity while the metal/plastic/flesh/binary monster of your creation lurches forward, smoke and steam spewing from its exhaust pipes. If you expertly wield the tools at your disposal, you can still usually manage to nudge it a tad to the left or a bit to the right, making sure it stays roughly on course.

3. Polishing the Stone

At first, you have a crude stone with countless rough edges. You show it to everyone. It looks like beach trash. It does almost nothing. People are confused why you are so excited about it. No one can see the form you see, trapped inside (though your friends try to, or at least try hard to pretend that they do). “Who would want that?” people silently wonder as they nod at what you’re saying. And these people are correct – no one wants it. You’re peddling rubbish.

But you believe in your stone. With enormous effort, you smooth the stone’s thousand rough edges. “You didn’t really need to smooth edge #732”, someone points out. “One little edge makes almost no difference.” This person is correct. Smoothing any single point makes *almost* no difference. Yet by smoothing one thousand rough edges, you’ve created a beautiful gem. It’s now the best of its kind in all the world. It’s now desired. “The idea was obvious,” people mutter, “I could have thought of that.”

4. Outlasting the Jungle

You’ve just parachuted into a dense jungle. Everyone knows there are treasures of incredible value buried there – in many different locations, in fact – but nobody knows where the treasure is. To make matters worse, the jungle is crawling with snakes, spiders, alligators, hungry bears, angry bears, crazy bears, bats, spike traps, people-eating plants, dragons, and buffalo, plus far too many other treasure hunters like you.

The vast majority of those who enter the jungle will end up fleeing it empty-handed. After a few snake/bear/buffalo/dragon bites and a few miles (or hundred miles) of strenuously hacking through the jungle, without ever quite knowing which direction to go, most have had enough.

Occasionally, though, people leave the jungle with some treasure in tow. And every once in a while, a group emerges with what is truly a king’s fortune. There is no shortage of treasure hunters. But you are different than the others. You are prepared, courageous, and confident – and you learn quickly. You have plenty of funding, a knife gripped between your teeth, a crossbow on your back, a net slung across one shoulder, bear spray for the bears, dragon spray for the dragons, grenades in case things get really tough, a tiny army at your back, 22 different maps written by 22 former adventurers (that semi-contradict each other), and a determination of tempered steel.

You know that if you can stay in the jungle longer than all the others – if, when others are falling down and coming apart, you can rally and try ten more paths to glory – while gaining skills from each failed outing – you will vastly increase your chances of success.

But then again, as you look around, you see dense thickets full of thorns in all directions. The tree cover blots out most of the sun, casting long, foreboding shadows. There is a faint bellowing roar in the distance, but the pitch is too low to identify its direction. And sweat beads on your forehead. “Which way?” your tiny army asks you.

So you’re thinking of starting a startup? Become a looper of questions to know how to program the machine that will polish the stone while you outlast the jungle.

This essay was first written on December 22, 2018, and first appeared on this site on January 28, 2022.

Subtle Introspection

Spencer — Tue, 14 Nov 2017 15:05:00 +0000

Here are ten subtle things it’s easy to miss about yourself that you may find it valuable to pay mindful attention to:

Your natural posture when sitting at your computer → this may affect how your body feels in 20 years
Where emotions manifest in your body (e.g., I feel anxiety in my chest and annoyance as a twinge in my face) → greater awareness here may help you more quickly and accurately identify your emotions.
The clothing you feel your best and worst in → this may lead you to dress in a way that makes you feel your best, and may make you more aware of how you want to be seen by others.
Key areas in which you’re subtly lying to yourself or issues you are rationalizing away → you may be avoiding certain truths about yourself (e.g., a problem or weakness you need to work on), your behaviors (e.g., that you’re behaving unethically in some situation), or other people (e.g., that a relationship in your life is destructive) that could be valuable to face head-on.
The deep roots of your anxiety (e.g., fear of failure, social rejection, physical danger, financial instability) → this may point to an area where focused problem solving or therapy (e.g., Exposure Therapy or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) could be helpful.
The people in your life that bring out the best or worst in you → this may be an indicator of who you should aim to spend more, or less, time with.
What you blame others or the world for that you helped created → you might inadvertently be blaming others for some things you should take (at least partial) responsibility for yourself (on the other hand though, some people blame themselves for things that really were the fault of others)
What sort of work tasks cause you to go into a flow state (i.e., those that challenge and engage you to hold your focussed attention) → you may want to seek out more of these activities
Why you waste time doing things that are neither useful, fun, nor meaningful → you may be addicted to something (e.g., a video game) or trying to fill a psychological need for which you could find a healthier alternative
What daily behaviors enhance, or detract from, your wellbeing (e.g., the way you eat, how much exercise you do, how much you drink, what time you go to bed, etc.) → there may simple changes that will make your life better