With a client today, we were talking a bit about the stresses at work due to a lot of disruption, none of it positive. However, we then moved onto the world in general and again, very little positive came up, especially around the way we operate as a society. But then, he was saying how he and his partner have been discussing doing things, not putting them off until later - no matter what it is.
Live in the moment.
So much of the rhetoric around "living in the moment" focuses on doing the enjoyable stuff, but as we discussed, that is not the point at all. It is about being present and doing what is necessary now, even if it is not enjoyable. Living in the moment, doesn't mean being happy, and as I went on to say to my client,
Be happy being unhappy.
Unhappiness gets a bad rap in today's culture, where we have been conditioned to believe that we should be happy, as if that is our natural state and if we are not happy, something is wrong.
That is the point of unhappiness!
But the goal isn't to always be unhappy, it is to continually be unhappy with different things, so that as one is solved, another is discovered. This is how we have evolved, where if we are unhappy doing something, we find a way to innovate so we can do less, or avoid it all together. But, we should never be satisfied with our lives, because we have developed a problem finding and solving mechanism in our body so we keep can evolving.
Happiness is in creating solutions.
It doesn't have to be solving climate change or the energy crisis, but we keep on advancing through the problems we love. We get better and better, the more we apply our creative selves to fix something useful. But we have broken the mechanism, because while this used to be a daily occurrence presented by our environment, we have engineered our experience so that we do not face problems in the same way, nor do we have to think about a solution, because we can effortlessly obtain one at our fingertips.
As I read the other day, if we were happy washing our clothes in the river, we would never have created a washing machine and would still be doing so. And the problem now is not only that we don't have to create a solution, we often don't even see the problems, because we are too busy being happily distracted. Unhappiness is a discomfort we can avoid through creative process, but we can also avoid it be distracting ourselves from the problems so we don't experience them. They don't go away, this is just a strategy to limit discomfort. And the more we do it, the less capable we become and the greater the intensity of discomfort gets when we experience it, which means it gets triggered by decreasing amounts of stress, or by situations and events we have no control over.
Live in the moment.
Okay, so that means doing what is necessary even when we don't like what we must do. Perhaps it is the dishes or the laundry, or perhaps it is getting up off the couch and unhappily getting yourself to the gym to exercise. The fact is that the more we do the stuff we don't want to do but should, the less of it we will end up having to do and the more time we will have to spend on the things we enjoy. Not only that, when we take care of what we must first, we don't have it hanging over our heads when we do the what we want to do. We can enjoy dessert, knowing that the vegetables are already eaten.
But if we ignore the uncomfortable tasks until later, even if we are able to block them out for a time, they will pile up until no matter how hard we try, they will demand our attention, steal our psychological peace, and clamour until they are heard. And by then, the mountain that has grown becomes stressful.
Avoiding stress isn't about making work easier, it is about doing what is necessary to be done *before doing the unnecessary. Of course, from an employment perspective reasonable volumes have to be taken into account, but it is the same in the personal space. Life should have some enjoyable tasks, but they should generally wait until the necessary tasks are done, because it is they that lay the foundation required to develop.
Unhappiness is a growth mindset.
Not depression.
Unhappiness is different to depression. Be unhappy with yourself and improve your condition in those areas. Be unhappy with your garden and grow something beautiful. Be unhappy with the state of the world, and change it. Investigate, learn, discover, and formulate solutions to make a difference in what you are unhappy with. Don't avoid experiencing unhappiness, change the environment that creates it.
And once perfect, acknowledge that nothing is perfect.
Get unhappy with something again and fix it until you are happy enough to move to the next item. Life is like owning a house, it requires maintenance work and repair, and once it is all done, it will need to be updated and repeated, again and again. You don't brush your teeth once and that is enough, nor do you eat once and that will get you through life. It is an ongoing list of tasks that change over time, but can never be fully completed.
Sources of unhappiness are endless.
And by extension, so are sources of happiness, because we get joy out of finding solutions to the problems we and others face. And joy doesn't mean pleasure or happiness, nor does it mean feeling good physically or mentally. Joy is a personal experience of delight, and it can be hard won by solving problems that matter to us or others. Joy is contentment, and that comes through holding together enough of what we are satisfied with. But as you know, we are never truly satisfied, because we see problems. Which means that joy and contentment is a cyclical process and the component that we keep avoiding that holds us back from having it, is unhappiness.
We need to be unhappy.
Unhappiness is opportunity and potential to put our skills to use, to learn and grow, and to do something that matters to us or the world by finding a solution to the cause. Don't avoid unhappiness, get to the root of why, and get to work.
Taraz
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The problem for me here is the definition of unhappy. It seems there is a broad swath of meanings for the word, and the specifics matter. For instanceI don't feel unhappy when I have to do paperwork, I reel resentment. I don't feel unhappy when I have to weed the garden, I feel concern. I don't feel unhappy when someone wrongs me (imo), I feel anger. Are these all facets of unhappiness?
You seem to be using 'Unhappiness' as an umbrella term for a lot of different feelings, which to some are unpleasant, and to others are motivating.
I am unhappy overall when I feel undesirable feelings for long periods of time without any pleasantries breaking the unpleasantnesses. I feel truly unhappy when I have lost someone, but not if they are still alive and there is some hope.
Unhappiness, to me, is prolonged undesirable feelings, not momentary ones. Happiness is not impacted by momentary glitches of trouble. One can be happy as a rule, and momentarily experience unpleasant stuff.
The best thing I have found for being happy as a rule, is to allow myself to reach for joy under the worst of times. Those of us who cannot do that, the Eeyores among us, are a drag to be around, so while I am compassionate enough to see this state and to try to be a part of ameliorating it, I make sure their unhappiness doesn't affect me. Sometimes that means minimizing contact, but not eliminating it altogether.
Anxiety and depression are motivating for me. I get off my ass and fix whatever is bothering me, if only to go for a walk with my dog. The morbidly unhappy often turn to substances, or other unhealthy unhappiness-perpetuating behavior. Those folks I avoid altogther if I can.
Yes, I agree, but unhappiness might be a feeling that may not even be present. A predicament may invoke the goddess of anxiety, but this is what I face when humbled or focused in a situation. Depression calls in the night, far and few between. Being undesired, being a nuisance, or simply the loss of people is a source of unhappiness for me.
What is then happiness, can it be being without all this stuff, or that is just bring in your comfort zone.
What is happiness? An age old question, related to 'what is good?'. Some are not comfortable unless they are what I would call miserable. Is comfort happiness?
For sure. Same for the definition of happy and the sources of it. a sadist and a masochist can both be happy.
When we are unhappy for long enough, only then we will do something about the source issue. When it is too fleeting, we don't do anything and I think that is where we are today. Before we sit in unhappiness for long enough to act., we distract ourselves away from it. We don't hit the point we need to reach to do something real.
Get unhappy enough, and you build strategies to deal with it. The lazy turn to substances to avoid whatever they are running from.
Unhappiness is full of difficulties. Hive is an unhappy place because it’s hard for all of us to be unhappy—we don’t do it. YouTube is a happy place, you just swipe and consume, consume. Nothing about creating new things like we do here.
Wait for the bull cycle to come and you’ll see how many happy people become unhappy chasing money around here. Then us unhappy people will be able to rest, and the happy people of today will have to work a lot. Meanwhile, let’s keep being unhappy.
Though I’ve always said it: great inventions weren’t made by unhappy people. They were made by lazy people who didn’t want to go to the river to get water or wash their clothes, and that’s how the washing machine came about.
And everything new is because of lazy people who wanted to make life easier, the very unhappy ones.
Until then, let’s enjoy the unhappiness of our beloved blockchain.
And how many unhappy patient people become happy? :D
I am not so sure. I used to think the same, but I now think that laziness isn't the trigger.
I guess I look at it more in terms of fiscal stuff. Like I told my wife a while ago we better be in decent health when we get older because we are tucking away a lot of money that we could be doing some really fun stuff with now. If we are saving it for then and we can't even enjoy it that is going to be a pity.
It would be, which is why so many people don't wait to spend. But they might get to retirement and say "what a pity we didn't save"
It's a delicate balance I guess.
I think I'd rather have an evenly spread out life with a bit of fun and a bit of work, then have a lot of fun, and then have nothing for the last 20 years.
Yeah, I guess that is a good point.
But you should "be content with what you have" and "if it ain't broke don't fix it" XD
like it's somehow impossible to both be content with what you have and still try to make things better
If I actually did that I would literally never, ever get to do anything I wanted to do ever XD
Correct. People seem to think that if improvement is happening, it is done out of hate, not love.
Huh, what a weird thought. I feel selection bias in the people I'm hanging out with striking again XD
The thing is, my friend @tarazkp, we’ve been conditioned to see discontent as a failure, when in reality it’s the main driving force behind human evolution. If we were ‘perfectly happy’ with everything, we’d still be living in caves. The state of ‘happy unhappiness’ you refer to is essentially the tension between our appreciation for what we have and the biological drive to improve. It is by no means a matter of misery, but rather a refusal to stagnate; and it is a sensible perspective on the human condition.
Which makes it incredible that people have accepted the conditioning that being content is holding and fighting for the status quo that keeps us struggling and suffering in the world today.
It’s much more sustainable to be driven by a healthy discontent than to burn out chasing a permanent state of euphoria that doesn't exist.
I don't know if I would call it unhappiness, but there is something in our personality that some of us are always looking to improve things. It is a double edged sword though, while I am always improving, sometimes I go overboard, my wife calls it focusing on the five percent. Everything is great but I am on the mission to improve that five percent and that is often just not worth it...
"I am unhappy with how my project is going, so I will improve it"
Unhappiness comes in many degrees, no matter the label.
It depends on where it is focused. Many people compete and look to improve what doesn't matter. Most of the global resources are spent on what doesn't matter for human improvement.
I think we should be content with our unhappiness as a motivator for change. It challenges us to engage more deeply with life, rather than just seeking distractions from our problems.
I reckon not many want a challenge anymore. They want it all handed to them. No one seems to enjoy the chase these days.
I think this was part of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, except the author goes on about Quality. He divides the world into the Romantic and Classic. The romantic live in the moment as a form of maximizing happiness. The classic live in the moment as a process, or things to be done.
And even the same experience can either be romantic or classic, like motorcycle riding, which is mostly a romantic experience. But if your mind is on arriving somewhere alive, then it shifts to a classic experience.
Here's a video that goes into it better than I can.
https://www.youtube.com/live/crH_i6k7yVE?si=xwjfhUOuA6mRspIM
Never heard of that, but "maximising happiness" is a dangerous path to take I think. Can do it with a drug and live the moment completely, but not for very long.
Yes, like the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
haven't read or seen that either :)
It's not particularly popular on Earth.
i suppose it’s a good way to put it, unhappy. is this the longing for happiness, or just the absence of it? it can’t be, no. what about being content? yes, there are moments of delight, but do they not overshadow the progression of life? a small step to meet with your friends and interact. for sure, it will be joyful. but what does that do to the overall scheme of life? a glimpse of happiness. the opposite could be true as well. these glimpses are the thing we live for; the other is the looming death and the looming idea that nothing matters in the end.
Life is full of a million mundane activities, and a few highlights. If we are only living for the highlights, we are going to miss most of life.
Yes, some things just happen randomly, but looking back, they are pretty nostalgic, like childhood memories. Some of which I don't know why specific ones stick with me, I guess as we get older, that stuff piles up.
Stuff piles up and we use it as if it is us, not that it happened to us.
Hmm, the reason you've shared is not bad, once we get satisfied with our work we may stop improving our skills but when we feel that there is still a chance to get better even after a perfect end.
Getting satisfaction, means we lose our hunger.
That's absolutely right.
Cool writing flows naturally.
I think the source of happiness or unhappiness is not from the amount of money. Money is necessary as long as we are alive. Many people with money are unhappy, because in their mind they Will be anxious, afraid, afraid of their money being stolen in the bank and others. Happiness and unhappiness come from ourselves, we can choose between the two. Power, fame can be a source of happiness and can also be a cause of suffering. Life is the art of painting without an eraser. Thank you @tarazkp. Have a great day.
Well, this can be debated, since money hasn't been around with us as a species for very long.
Yes, it needs to be a topic of debate. Thank you.
I love that shot of Smallsteps!
Me too. She was so cute as a baby.
I'm honestly living unhappily nowadays. Maybe because it's my fault, too. I just let pure happiness prevailed in the past, even if deep inside I had lots of frustrations. Anyways, this is truly a great post. There are lots of things I've learned. Thanks to you!
We should really identify the root causes of unhappiness, explore their effects, and uncover actionable steps so we can live a more fulfilled life.
right.. i though about it and it's like watching a good movie.. usually the best ones build to a climax and that should be 'the happiest' or most satisfying part of the whole thing.
I also realized how I am most happy.. like humming and singing.. when its mealtimes. i am actually most content/happy when doning stuff like hive or adding to my investments or even working out.. knowing how i am bettering my situation through effort and doing something a little hard and discomforting.
Unhappiness has a cause. Depression is general.