Our lives are inundated with practicality and productivity. We think that if there’s no purpose to something, there’s no point in doing it. In reality the best things in life have no purpose.
We sacrifice our time and our sanity doing what we don’t want to do, so at some future point we will create the freedom to do what we love.
We seek happiness in things. We seek happiness in the acceptance of others, in material possessions, in social status. We even search for happiness in some future-promised afterlife. We sabotage ourselves and our entire lives because we fail to understand a very simple but easily overlooked fact.
The Search for Happiness is the Single Greatest Cause of Misery
You can’t find something that’s already there. Happiness exists now. It’s not something you have to find. That’s like trying to find your breath.
It’s the grasping of the mind that causes unhappiness. If you’re not happy, it’s because your mind doesn’t allow you be happy. And the reason your mind doesn’t let you be happy, is because you’re stuck in the vicious cycle of productivity, judgment and purpose. That’s not to say productivity is bad, or that doing things that have a purpose is wrong. It’s basing the reason for your existence on them that causes so much anguish.
When we place our happiness solely in “getting” something, completing a certain number of tasks on our to-do list, or achieving a goal, we’re fooling ourselves. We’re like a rabbit with a carrot stick attached to our heads. We keep chasing the carrot, but we never get there. We never stop to think that it might be the chasing that’s causing the problem. We’re too distracted trying to find a better way to beat the game. As soon as we reach one level of success, we’re hurrying to upgrade our search and move on to the next level of the chase. We never stop to think that it’s not the failure to win the game that causes our grief, but the game itself.
We neglect to realize that sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to stop participating in the problem. Sometimes the best way to to solve a problem is to just stop caring (see: not giving a damn).
Sometimes…
- The best way to solve the problem of not having a lot of cool friends is to stop caring about having cool friends.
- The smartest way to be happy with the place you live is to stop caring about living in a two story house with a pool, a fireplace, central air and satellite TV.
- The simplest way to be content with yourself is not to achieve greatness and praise, but to accept yourself fully for who you are now.
- The quickest route to happiness is to stop caring about finding happiness and to start being happiness.
By not caring, we immediately release ourselves of the grasping of the mind. But it’s not easy to stay in this mindset (the mind loves to grasp); it’s something we have to constantly cultivate.
It’s especially difficult when our society tends to place more value on things, than on experiences. We value what we do more than how we feel.
This is completely ridiculous when you think about it. Because the way you feel should be more important than anything else. Isn’t the purpose of everything you do to feel good? Isn’t the purpose of that new car, that promotion, or college degree to give you a feeling of accomplishment? Isn’t that supposed to make you happy?
The problem with this is we’re basing our happiness on temporary things. We’re deriving our joy from an achievement, or an attainment. This isn’t true happiness; it’s an addiction. We get a short burst of endorphins to our bloodstream from our new TV/television, or new iPod, and then what happens? It disappears. It leaves us feeling empty and we begin looking for our next fix.
Our advertising and consumer culture doesn’t help this much. We are constantly bombarded with messages that we need this, or we need that. Incessantly, we hear: “Buy this and it will solve your problem!” If only we could solve that problem we may finally be happy. Wrong. It’s not the problems that are the problem. I mean, buying a more efficient vacuum or sowing on that button you’ve been meaning to for seven years is great. You may feel a sense of achievement for a few moments or days. But you’re still looking for happiness in a thing.
It’s the same with productivity. If only we could finish all of the things on our to-do list, could we be content. If only we could accomplish all of our goals, could we finally be gratified. This thinking is based on the illusion that you’ll reach a certain point where everything is done. You finally made it! There’s nothing left in your inbox, all your projects are complete and your lifelong goals are achieved! Now you can rest easy.
But this point never seems to come, does it? That’s because there will always be things to do. There will always be challenges, because everything in life is constantly changing. If you reached a point in your life where you had no more problems, no more struggles, no more worries, life would stop. The game would end and there would be no point left in playing.
So… what can we do about this?
We Need to Stop Caring
That doesn’t mean we stop trying to achieve our goals or striving for personal growth. It just means that we no longer base our happiness on fleeting, semi-permanent things.
There are obviously some situations where not caring may have serious negative consequences (see paying your rent). Excessive caring, however, is likely to make you miserable.
The reason caring too much can be detrimental to your health, is you’re so focused on the future. Your identity is too attached to outcomes. If something does, or doesn’t go your way, it will likely have an enduring effect on your mood for the rest of the day.
Instead, we should base our happiness on permanent things. Things that don’t change. Desires that don’t shift from moment to moment. We choose to find our happiness in living. In life itself. In fact, we don’t even need to “find” happiness. We can be happiness.
So stop searching. You can’t find something that’s already there.
For more counterintuitive approaches to hacking happiness subscribe to Illuminated Mind today.
Nice article…i’m there!
I like how you phrase it: being happiness. It’s all in our minds, isn’t it?
I liked this one a lot! :)
Jonathan,
I agree with most of your points, but the main point is not quite sitting with me. I wholeheartedly agree that happiness is not “out there.” But it’s through accepting where you are that you start spending less time worrying about how where you are is wrong. You accept, and you have no need to care — I’m not sure if it works the other way around? It may just be me, of course.
ari
You are so right. Happiness is something we DECIDE.
Each moment of life asks us to make a choice, a choice of action, word, thought, emotion… Billions of choices are being made continually, around the world by billions of people, and every choice influences each of us, either immediately or through a ripple effect, and the art of living life with the least resistance is to understand this and flow with it.
The manner in which we greet every breath of every day determines our level of peace and happiness.
Whenever I find that my mind has wandered into a rut, I pull myself out with this knowledge. If necessary, I go down a list of anything I can think of and really prove that it’s just that damn monkey brain acting up:
“Would a new car give me any MORE bliss? No.”
“Would a cream soda really make me happier? No.”
“Would a raise stop sadness from returning? No.”
What are your thoughts on art?
What is the function of creating art?
Is art meaningless? Or worse, misdirection?
Does it cause more problems than good?
This the whole foundation of the Zen mentality… just be. If you’re always chasing happiness you get in the habit of always chasing… Most of us only experience fleeing happiness because we base it on achievements and possessions.
Great post, i once came to a certain realisation and whilst It isn’t articulated very well, I hope you get the point:
“Nothing can make us as happy as we truly are within. Think of all the things we buy and achieve to feel happy anyway, it’s just an inner feeling we are experiencing. It’s not like a pill that is giving us ‘happiness’. Therefore we have the choice and the ability to be happy more often, if not always”
When I began reading this article I thought: “yeah, I already know this and I think I disagree”. Somewhere in the middle the truth of your words struck me, it’s absolutely true!
Thanks!
I think I would call “not caring” something else … non-attachment! But I completely agree with the essence of this article. Everything we need is right here, right now, in the present moment. Too bad that the mind doesn’t find this thought particularly entertaining, and pushes us back into striving!
Great article.
Blessings,
Andrea
What a wonderful post. The more I simplify my life and concentrate on those things that are really important the happier I am.
I lost my wife to a sudden illness about a year and half ago. This kicked off a period of self examination and a general retooling of my life. Mostly I have found that things don’t satisfy me, the act of doing things with or for other people is where I derive my joy. Doing things is so much more important to me than having things.
Great post, I came a across it via Brazen Careerist.
I’m ending my summer internship today, and am in a weird limbo/freaking out about trying to find the next place to get my achievement fix. At the same time, I’m doing my best to just be. Relax, enjoy where I am. Revel/reflect on my summer, and move forth with diligence, but not urgency. Trust that it will all come full circle the more I stop forcing things to happen. I think it all comes with being 22… :)
@ Ray: I’m so glad that you were able to re-evaluate your life and what matters. That’s a really hard experience to go through.
@ Andrea: It’s a pain in the ass, isn’t it? Sigh.
While on one hand I agree, on the other, if happiness is something we choose to accept in the present, then what is it that drives someone onward?
The evolutionary impulse will never give us peace.
Ever.
We are forever wired to seek and find.
However …
We can adopt a policy of hootless composure, a policy where we can be at peace with either having or not having a particular outcome.
We can find our flow somewhere between stopping and chasing.
Let us care, but let us also take care not to care too much.
Peace.
Happiness is always perspective. But what really makes you happy? At any moment you are choosing what to think and feel, but also how to act. Sometimes we must choose to think about long-term happiness instead of being happy in the moment. Sometimes we must do activities that aren’t very pleasing in the moment, but in the long-run bring us pleasing results. The trick is to keep those long-term results in the back of our mind while we live in the moment. That’s how goals are achieved and that’s another way we can continually escalate our level of joy as we move through life.
This is an excellent post! Thanks for sharing. Not taking life so seriously, not caring too much (or even at all) about stuff is a great way to move effortlessly through the world and, in some rather counterintuitive way, you will probably end up being more successful and adding more value.
I don’t care for this article much,
that makes me happy!
Love this. I have often told my clients, “Working more is not the answer. You could work 24 hours a day and there will always be more work to fill you time.” I believe some of the keys to happiness are just what you said. Stop chasing “IT” and just choose to BE it.
Excellent stuff, as usual! :)
~Monica
I’m approaching the end of research for a book I’m writing – a narrative tale of a person’s search for Wisdom/Happiness/Meaning. I’ve stumbled on this blog from a post on Zen Habits and it has crystalised the thoughts I have about happiness. Thank you so much.
Now all I have to do is write the actual words…
@ Monica: I completely agree. I mean, we chase these things, material things, lifestyles, etc. But what we’re really trying to find is acceptance of ourselves. We think as soon as we start living based on a certain idea of a lifestyle that others will approve of, or as soon as we get enough stuff, we can finally accept our lives and be happy. That’s just ridiculous.
@ DiscoveredJoys: Sounds really interesting. Let me know when you’ve got a copy, I would love to check it out.
Yup I think you are hitting upon something here. I digg. not sure what I can add other than be happy. :-)
Once again, your post has struck a nerve with me. It’s really speaking to my heart and exactly what I need to hear at this moment. I struggle with this daily as my mind insists on sticking in the same rut of the “pursuit of happiness”.
Naturally, no one around me gets it either. They don’t see that I am unhappy because they see that I have all the things that are “supposed” to make a person happy: good job, nice house, nice car, etc. Perhaps I need to realize that I CAN be happy. Right NOW. Nothing needs to change but my mindset. It’s a lot easier said than done.
I think I agree with what you are trying to say.
I think you are not saying it quite clearly – or I am confused or I disagree.
Focusing on more permanent things. I can’t think of a desire that doesn’t vary fairly rapidly: I’m hungry, I eat, no more hunger and so on.
Focusing on the future also happens here and now. There are reasons for our doing it (some good – making sure we get the rent paid, some we may think not so good).
I think we can be with our desires and that in this process we find a sense of equilibrium. This may be what you mean by happiness.
I like your approach. I will be reading your site again.
Wonderful post!
My online nickname – and the title of my blog – is based on this quote by David Hume: “The great end of all human industry, is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modeled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators. Even the lonely savage, who lies exposed to the inclemency of the elements, and the fury of wild beasts, forgets not, for a moment, this grand object of his being.”
Let me quote that first line again for effect; “The great end of all human industry, is the attainment of happiness”. I agree wholeheartedly with your analysis that many of our troubles and hindrances to happiness is that we set our goals too high and/or do not simply become happy with what we have. The psychologist within me, however, wonders where this behavior comes from, and why we all seem to be given this drive to focus on the future and the outcomes. Already at school we focus on getting high test grades just to be able to “succeed”, and put ourselves through long hours of study.
But I digress. Again; wonderful post, very impressive, and I’ll be adding this blog to my feed aggregator to read more in the future.
Very good post! It reminded me a lot of a book I just finished called “The Geography of Bliss” by Eric Weiner. If you have yet to read it I would recommend it, it deals with this subject in a very entertaining and eye opening way. I always need a reminder to stop caring. Thanks!
This is beautiful! I hope you don’t mind, but I am printing it out (with credits to you and your blog) to share. If this is bad please let me know. Thank you!!
word. The easiest way to get rich is not to want anything.
Hey,
I’m new to your blog, though i’ve read some of your contributions to zenhabits. Anyway, i agree to your points. Many of us believe that happiness is attainable with having all those things we’ve dreamed of.We’ve gotten used to listing the thing we should have: The new car, the big house, or the job title. Yet, in truth we can be happy where we are. This post reminded me of a book i read called Dematerializing, how society is teaching its kids to attach who they are to what they have. Unknowingly, we are teaching them to be unhappy about themselves. Kudos to this post. We should stop caring about what the norm is, sometimes we need to take a step back from the should bes and have tos of this world and just be ourselves—love who we are and be happy with that. Pursue what we love, because we love it, not because its going to get us a bigger house.
“There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way”——Buddah
Great articles. I live a simply life and it’s only when I think about what I don’t have (and feel I should have) that I get down. Most of the time I’m happy for no particular reason. It’s just a choice. It’s always nice to see articles reinforcing what I already do and that provide additional tips. Thanks!
I totally needed to read this. Thank you. I’m going to buy your book right now…
Buddha said “too attached”
Christ said “not of this world”
Great article there mate, you’ve written exactly what I’ve come to realise recently. Very good article.
You can be happy if you stop caring but eventually you start to feel as though purpose is missing from life.
Happiness, per se, is overrated.
thanks for the article
Wow…. I really needed to hear that; I’ve been depressed lately and now I’m beginning to understand why.
Interesting article and topic. Recently I was put in a situation where I pretty much chose to adopt this mindset. It was a very good choice – kinda like the Universe offered me a moment and I embraced it. The powers that be did not much care for it – but that was there ego talking and I have NO tolerance for egos.
I don’t care about happiness and so this article is not very useful for me! Just kidding – great post!!
I would concur with everything here except for that rubbish about what we feel being an end to itself.
I’m miserable and downright content with it.
Your ideas about happiness are enlightened. “Future” and “Past” are both unreal except as experienced within each mind. Every one of us will die. It is sad that this short span of life should be greatly controlled by memes of hyper-productivity mixed with unending fear. The answer to this slavery lies within, as we invent our own purpose between bouts of having it inflicted upon us by outside forces.
Maximize pleasure. Minimize pain.
“the way you feel should be more important than anything else”
I agree with most of what you say here, but you’ve got to agree that there is validity to the idea that the way you feel is often, in fact, much LESS important than a lot of other things, including doing what you know needs to get done in SPITE of how you feel. I guess the distinction is between letting your feelings dictate how you live your life and letting PRINCIPLES dictate how you live your life. I for one have spent much of my life being far too attached to my feelings and “what they mean” and processing them, and I believe that this “addiction” has held me back enormously. Doesn’t Buddhist meditation teach us to view the world, and (especially) our emotional landscape with detachment, so that we can see the fallacies we’re wrapped up in? Doesn’t it show us a path to, if not enlightenment, then at least clarity? And doesn’t that clarity allow us to in fact make BETTER choices for ourselves?
wow. this explains my misery since my adolescence (when i started asking endless questions of “why…. why…?”.
i was always searching for happiness. i would read articles and self-help books and it wouldnt work.
i would start going into a deeper level such as philosophy and psychology, but the more do, id feel lost as ever.
i guess i just have to ‘stop trying’ to grasp the ‘un-grasp-able’.
stop being too fixated and obsessed with goals and achievements, especially those that are attached to my ego.
I thought this post was great, but I think Michael Shanley was completely wrong on one point, and I feel compelled to bring it up in this way. A cream soda will almost always make you feel better. I mean, come on, it’s CREAM SODA!.
Warm Regards,
James.
what are the permanent things we should care about? what’s permanent in life?
God is the only permanent thing in life.
i need enlightening. i want to learn how to not care. i am feeling alone & it sucks. if there is a way to live life & be uneffected by the actions or absence of action of others i would like to find it. i am tired of feeling (for others?). i just want to sleep most of the time…but i can’t sleep all day & all night. i don’t want to feel this way anymore.
Live,Love,Laugh
Thanks for the wise words. I’m gonna try this, cuz I need it right now. I seem to be in a bind and afraid to personal grow. This may be just what I need.
Great post. Seriously (y)
GREAT article. Just the advice I was looking for. Helped tremendously.
Found this via another blog, had to say it’s GREAT. I care way too much about what I shouldn’t, and strive for perfection when I should realize that what I do now is fine. It’s been hard for me learning to accept myself, but bit by bit and day by day I think I’m learning to do just that. Someday, maybe I won’t have to worry about it so much. I hope.
My motto is…..”Its not that I don’t care, its just not important”. People get themselves all bent out of shape, first of all because they can’t say no, they sign for packages that don’t have their name on them. Most people today do not have any boundaries and they let anything and everything bother them. And they don’t forgive, so they let someone who offended them to contol them. I’ve met a lot of bleeding hearts, and to be honest with you I let them bleed. Of course I’m not the most popular person, but I’ll tell you this much I’m the happiest.
I care to much this is my problem! I am always trying to care! I am always thinking that people are mad at me or I say hello to people all the time I am excesive and the3y end up hating me for it! I am horrible at this I am too nice of a person and AI need to stop! I need to stop caring and being so dame nice! Because, of this I have no friends and girls are not atracted to me what do I do?
This is just fantastic – the expressions are very clear and beautiful, worth pondering – a great post.
This is a really great post but you say to not care anymore so nonchalantly. It’s not possible the way you set it up. It’s kind of like telling an alcoholic to still drink but to not let it bother them. It would be fantastic if there was another article that explained a way to complete the goals established on this website.
It is so difficult to not feel the pressure to get the quick fix of endorphins by “keeping up with the jones’s” and feeling to the need for achievement such as a college degree. It is also hard to see where you can achieve happiness without these things. For many happiness=success as you stated. It is important to look at the simple pleasures in life that make you happy and surround yourself with these things. Thanks for your great article!
It is a top class article! I really like it.
“Happiness is here”- Andrew
awesome post, thanks
I believe that i can now rest easy,thank you, i feel that now that you have opened my eyes. It was the very pursuit of my own happiness and my constant philosophy that if i could control things and plan out things in my future things would get better for me. but now i realize that it was my own anxieties that were my undoing because my care about my own personal happiness was my undoing.
Thank you a lot for your article
Wow! Simply great. I don’t know whether you have read Bhagvat Gita or what, but simply what I was trying to understand from that appears here in straight simple English! I landed in your site from another similar site (Enhnace life). I think today I am very lucky.
Thank you all.
I have thought about this a lot. We are human “beings,” not human “doings.” Happiness can only come from God (Jesus Christ). We need to “Be still and know that He is God.”
what is simple is true!
Reading this article made me feel great. I didnt stumble upon this. I was intentionally googling “how to stop caring”. This article told me everything I was wanting to hear. I’m ‘happy’ now.
Wow, I did the same thing… google’d for ‘how to stop caring.’
My current situation represents the comic strip of dilbert.
Since a young boy i’ve had a fascination with technology and strive to become an amazing engineer. Currently I work with a load of morons. Where all my ideas, projects, and aspirations mean nothing. Because the people around me are nothing. Yet they are happy and ignorant. Why? Because they do not care. This has hurt me greatly. The current economic situation forces me to stay. I believe this article has helped me continue on.
Bryan
“Why do I give valuable time
to people who don’t care if I
If I cry…
And why do I smile
at people who I’d much rather
kick in the eye?”
Morrisey