In February, Alex Shalman had the great idea to explore what people mean when they say they want to be happy. The result was a list of five simple questions that formed the basis for bunch of really great interviews which you can read over at The Happiness Project page. What’s great about these interviews is not only finding out what motivates a number of very interesting and motivated individuals, but also the fact that in each one you can probably find some aspect of your own personal motivations. Reading through the interviews, I felt as though I were making contact with the positive natures of dozens of my own hidden personas.
Now I’d like to contribute to The Happiness Project by answering these questions myself, and by encouraging you to do the same.
1. How do you define happiness?
For me, happiness is the feeling of being full and satisfied, of not missing anything. Often I have everything I need, but am not happy because for some reason I am caught up in something I have needed, or something I will need. When I am happy, life is simple and activity is rewarding. When I am unhappy, the very same life can feel excessively complicated, and the very same activities can feel forced and meaningless.
As I talk about it now, I realize that happiness seems to almost be an independent variable. Certainly the events in my life affect my ability to be happy for better or for worse, but it is my reaction to those events which ultimately determines how I feel in this moment.
2. On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your happiness now, versus when you were a child?
As we look back on our early lives, the memories that we find there change based on our current beliefs. If, for example, you have an internal belief that your adult life will never match the bliss of childhood, you will not only remember only the happy times, but will even put a positive spin on events that you could otherwise remember in a negative light. As you improve your outlook on the present, you will gain access to a more realistic view of your early life.
I remember being a problematic and unhappy child, always convinced that life would improve as I grew older and gained greater command over myself and my social environment. It seems I was right! Every year since my 23rd birthday has been the best year of my life. I’m about to put a button on my 28th year, and I have absolute confidence that 29 will be better still. Life begins at 30, and 40 is the new 20 
Still, when I probe more carefully into the reality of my childhood situation, I can find reasons to doubt the accuracy of my memory. When I look closely, I can see that I was often less problematic than I like to give myself credit for. In many situations, my actions were very effective at drawing attention and emotional energy away from the problems of my family members, thereby offering them the only type of relief that I could have given them. I remember feeling unhappy, but to what extent am I simply overlooking the times when I felt happy in order to satisfy my current semi-conscious need to have earned the happiness that I currently enjoy, or to have escaped from some terrible circumstance?
Regardless, I’ll take a happy present over a happy past any day of the week. In the future, I think I’ll learn to access more of my happiest early memories, and to spin my early life in a much more positive way than I have done in early adulthood. I think my happiness level is up to about an 8 now; I like having something to work toward.
3. What do you do on a daily basis that brings you happiness? (and how consistent is the feeling of happiness throughout your day)
As a doctoral student, life is stressful and challenging. I tend to be busy with work, classes, papers, residency, case reports, applications, qualifying exams, and all manner of similar craziness about 90% of my waking life. The remaining time I try to spend with my wonderful fiancée, which leaves very little personal time and even less time to spend with friends.
The crazy thing is, I’m learning to enjoy the commotion. I’m learning to reflect on the go, to squeeze meditation and blogging into my morning commute, to really savor the hour at the end of each day when I sit down and reconnect with my loved one over a glass of wine and a cigarette. I’m learning to have a sense of humor about my externalized coping strategies. Little by little, I’m learning to decide to enjoy this. All of it. And to appreciate the people around me just for being here to share this madness with me.
4. What things take away from your happiness? What can be done to lessen their impact or remove them from your life?
What takes away from my happiness is when I forget. As Bill Hicks said so well, it’s just a ride; it’s just a choice that we can make right now, between love and fear. The more I remember, the better life gets.
5. What do you plan on doing in the future that will bring you even more happiness?
Over the last year, my clinical training and personal explorations have brought me a really long way toward understanding people who I previously could not make any sense out of. As a result, my relationships are improving, my everyday interactions are improving, it is easier and more natural for me to find help when I need it, and to understand when other people need help. And with each step toward a higher level of empathy for other people, I find that I also discover a greater level of empathy for myself.
So often we fail to understand ourselves, instead blaming or shaming ourselves for our imagined shortcomings or projecting our fears and frustrations onto the people around us. I believe more and more that everyone does exactly what they have to do to get by, given the internal and external resources available to them. My plan for personal development and increased happiness is to keep learning to understand people, to keep learning to understand myself, and to keep nurturing the love that is struggling to grow inside of me.