Find your thing.

For me that's been different things as I've gone through life. Currently in my 50s and enjoying riding a motorbike at weekends. When I'd ridden all the local roads so many times it was starting to get boring, I added another layer and am now riding my bike to every Village in my county. It's going to take a while, but has given another layer of interest and purpose. Many people won't understand why it's interesting to me, and that's fine, they don't have to. Finding what works for you is half the challenge.

BTW, if you've got depression, then finding happiness without resolving that is really, really difficult. Been there and absolutely everything felt bleak and pointless. Fixing that is the first step.

Hobbies, do things you like to do. If you don't have any yet then have some fun figuring out new things to see what clicks for you

You don’t find happiness. It comes and goes. Imagine being happy all the time; it would just become normal. You need non happy times to appreciate the happy times.

As someone that is either very happy or very sad, I find happiness in my hobbies. I need my mind to be occupied to pass the time, but then there is the thought I’m just waiting to die and passing time.

Hobbies that make me happy are:

• Indoor bouldering (rock climbing) is the only thing I’ve found that lets me escape the constant train of thought and be in the moment. It’s a nerdy hobby as lots of problem solving mixed with strength training.
• Running
• Rubiks cube
• Lego
• Cross stitch
• Paint by numbers
• 3D printing
• learning
• many more but this is getting long.

As someone who is down a lot of the time and has ADHD but stopped the meds as the side affects were worse than living with ADHD; I’ve found that routine is a massive thing required to be content with life. Consistent bed time and wake time. I am not a morning person but after 18 months of waking at 07:30 or 06:00, depending on if I’m taking the train to work, that I now wake up a few minutes before my alarm quite often; I’m still tired and I hate it but it gets easier.

Spending time with other people is key too. I find if I’m down it’s usually cause I’ve been alone a lot (which I love) and that can be bad for me so I’ll go see friends even if I don’t want to just to engage.

Luckily I can spot when I’m spiralling. I have an urge to fire up Minecraft and live vicariously through Steve and shut out the world.

I recently asked a friend of mine something similar and i will add it here for the sake of discussion.

We need to fulfill our basic needs in order to be happy and content with life. There are 3 basic/main categories:

1: bodily needs: better diet, exercise etc.

2: mental needs: intellectual conversation/pondering, reading/writing a book, even playing some video games etc.

3: spiritual needs: religion/hope for a better time and better place

I would also add one more,

4: social needs: spending time with friends and family, doing something for the community, relationships and dating etc.

Since my friend and I are religious, 3 makes sense on its own. But you might need to think about what it means to you. Imo the most important part is having hope.

Personally for me, its 1 and 4 that i struggle the most with. And in the end, its okay to be wrong and try different things and formulas to find what works best for you.

Don't be afraid to make mistakes! You live and you learn!

Happiness is not found. It's not an object, rather a state of perception. The more you'll objectify and discretize happiness, the less likely you're to achieve it.

That being said, usually drugs.

On a serious note, two books helped me to understand this mystery a bit more

1. Zen Mind, beginner's mind by S. Suzuki
2. Flow: the psychology of optimal experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

It seems that happiness is something in one's mind, an internal state. I've seen people happy who have very little, and the opposite. Happiness is therefore a perception. The mind is the lens through which we perceive everything, so focusing the lens at the right things and ensuring it's a clean lens are the right starting point to "finding" happiness.

Cleaning the lens: Eat well, sleep well, exercise.

These three fundamentals lay the foundation of a clean lens. If you do the above, you have created the best physical conditions for your mind. You are unfortunately a chemical creature, so the physical state of your brain is critical to all pursuits, including perception of reality.

The next step is pointing the lens at the right things, stay tuned for our next episode!

When l don't worry about family, work, mortgage or the long list of chores I'm pushing in front of me.

I mostly listen to books during the commute, and play a few games when time allows it.

I‘m completely switching up my life right now to live to 87 to be able to watch the total eclipse on my birthday

Realize you aren't going to be happy all the time. We live a life that sometimes sucks. Our grandparents, our parents, our siblings, and our friends die. Choose to remember the happy times you had with them. Go do things you like to do, remember those times when shit is bad and know that you can make more happy memories later too.

Find happiness in love, from people, from pets, maybe even your children if you choose to have some. Make others happy too if you want because happiness is better when shared with others.

By remembering and being fully aware of who you are in this world ... by being grateful for the good fortune you had by being born in the situation and family you have now.

You could have been born in an African village and lived for a year before dying of something. You could have been born in the slums of Mumbai. You could have been born in Gaza. You could also remove the time constraint and you could have been born a peasant in medieval Europe.

Out of all the billions of human lives that have existed so far, there are many that were born during this time but only a small percentage of them were lucky enough to be born in a family with wealth and privilege enough to enjoy the modern technologies we've created so far.

I am lucky, you are lucky and anyone who is able to read this is lucky to have been born at this time to enjoy this online chat.

Remember where you are in this world and this time. As unhappy as you think you might be, there are millions of people that wish they could have the life you have now.

Be happy because you are a winner of the cosmic lottery of existence.

For me:

1. Set goals
2. Accomplish those goals

That’s what gives me the best feedback. The more realistic goals I set and the more often I accomplish them, the better I feel. Bonus points for setting “due dates” for bigger goals and seeing if you can meet your own deadline.

We don't

A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy.

Albert Einstein

smells are effervescent and seem to be very impactful.... anecdotal evidence only

Good friends, core friends. Good memories. Doing good things, helping. Toss in a cup of stability and a couple hobbies. If you’re practicing or just recently discovered practicing adhd, another dozen hobbies and a therapist/counselor.

i tried checking at walmart, but they haven't carried it since the early 1970s

By finding not happiness, but contentment. As you get older, you learn that to be happy, you have to be content.

Eating people. Eating family and friends, eating vagrants, eating the needy. Some people can even taste the camaraderie of the people they work with.

It comes down to eating people and if you have trouble just eat people. You know what they say hungry people eat people.

It's simple, really. Just don't search for it. Cherish the little things

I enjoy helping people. Making other people's lives better is the goal I set for myself, and I love it. I keep souvenirs as to remember people that I've helped.

I look around my house and just feel this sense of pride and peace knowing other people are happier now than how I found them

I remind myself "it's just life" and that "no one makes it out of life alive"

A tiny bit of nihilism goes a long way

I just bought a skateboard and I'm going to head to the skate park, alone. So I would say one tip (of many) is don't limit yourself to social stigmas and have fun!

Purpose.

A few years ago, my wife and I left the Mormon church. That helped a lot. Along that line coffee makes me happy.

• Take time off from social media once in a while, or at least avoid doomscrolling all day. Bad stories generate FAR more engagement than good stories, and every form of media knows this. If 100,000 people in your area have an average-to-good day and 5 people have terrible days, all 5 stories presented to you will detail how things are in your area are terrible.

• Physical health affects mental health and vice versa. Eat healthy (or healthier). Stay hydrated. Get 7-9 hours of sleep regularly and use sleep hygeine. Get 90+ minutes of exercise (anything that raises your heartrate) a week which is like 15 minutes/day. Don't worry about doing it all immediately - if you try to change everything at once you're more likely to get overwhelmed and burn out. It's way better to make slow, sustainable changes over months than it is to do a difficult crash course for a short time and get fed up with the process.

• Do thankfulness exercises. When I go to bed at night I think of 3 things I'm thankful for in the day. On average or bad days it may be that I wasn't in constant/chronic pain, that I got to eat and drink, and that I'm in a safe place and a soft bed. Just remembering those basics (that many of us take for granted) helps keep me aware of good things in my life.

• Find ways to enjoy hobbies that require participation - arts, sports, board/video games, whatever. Just something other than passively taking in TV/online media. This will help you feel engaged and double points if it's something that allows for improvement because you'll feel rewarded as you get better.

I buy my wife matching undies and bras.

It's fun for me, she appreciates the new clothes and I pick out what I want to see her in / out of.

Win win.

I found happiness. I am almost done with it. You want it after me?

Hobbies, spending time wirh friends and families, eating, murdering vagrants, helping the needy, and some people even enjoy comraderie with people they work with.

It comes down to figuring out what makes you happy and if you have trouble you just need to try new things.

Small things. Sounds. The temperature of the air. The fact that my side isn't hurting right now. The kids costumes who were just trick or treating at my house.

Happiness is fleeting, like other emotions, it comes and goes. Focusing on it is like chasing a wave.

Understanding your own values and what you find meaningful is essential for moving through life, because we're not in control. Stuff happens, and we get to deal with it.

Find an IRL community that means something to you. You have to feel like you belong somewhere, and people need a support group to help when they're down. You can't feel happy if you're lonely.

Gratitude and helping others