How to become happy

We humans are wired to pursue pleasure and avoid pain as one of our survival mechanisms. If we were engineered to seek pain, we would have strived for self-harm and could not have made it this far. Therefore, every human being wants to be happy and I’m not exempt from this natural process.

As part of my quest for happiness, I have recently read three books that have motivated me to retrace the path I have taken towards happiness. I feel the need to share the insights and realisations I have gained from the titles with others, as I know how desperately, and sometimes recklessly, everyone struggles to be happy.

The books are The Courage to Be Disliked and The Courage to Be Happy by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, and The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck by Mark Manson–all are the bestsellers worldwide. These titles have offered me a radical insight that I have been looking for happiness in the wrong ways. I have tried to be happy by seeking happiness. However, the books taught me the other way around that the true way to be happy is to deliberately embrace stress and strains.

Though I have always been told that stress is bad for human health, the authors of these books have substantiated their points on how accepting stress builds our emotional resilience as workouts shape our bodies. Through reading these titles, I have come to realise that happiness is not comfort, but rather embracing constraints. It is a skill we need to develop to tolerate discomfort and stress. It is the courage to navigate life’s inevitable challenges without succumbing to fear or comparison with others.

To put it plainly, life is a series of problems and true happiness comes from solving, not avoiding, the problems. Therefore, happiness is inseparable from discomfort. Life is inevitably challenging, and the pursuit of happiness requires engagement with struggle. We can be happy by only facing our discomfort and fear and avoiding hardship is the surest way to be unhappy. In a word, the obstacles we embrace, rather than evade, bring happiness to our lives.

Another important insight I have learned from the books is that true happiness can be achieved by taking full responsibility for our lives. Kishimi and Koga, drawing on Adlerian psychology, argue that unhappiness often comes from living under the weight of others’ expectations. They think humans will have to attain freedom to be happy and that begins when they decide not to pursue approval from others. To extrapolate further, freedom is being disliked by others. We don't need to be afraid of being disliked since the way to be happy includes the courage to be disliked too.

Here, the ultimate lesson is simple but profound: the courage to inhabit your own life is the greatest act of defiance in a society obsessed with spectacle and superficial validation. By embracing responsibility and freeing ourselves from the approval from others, we reclaim sovereignty over our inner world, thus creating happiness.

That’s why happiness is a choice that we can bring about by accepting, not avoiding, discomfort. Acceptance means absolute acceptance where there is no room for any excuse not to embrace whatever may come in life. It is because accepting the negative itself is positive and expecting the negative itself is negative.

We have to seek happiness from sorting out problems, not fearing them. In pursuit of happiness, we have to develop the courage to be disliked by others. We have to be super okay for people not to like us as we ourselves don't like everyone.

From these teachings emerges a clear principle: live deliberately. In short, craft your life intentionally rather than drifting in response to circumstances. Happiness is not passive. It is a practice, a skill, and a form of courage. It is the result of the choice to endure pain and suffering of discomfort and distress, that is, acceptance breeds happiness.