Happy is a 5 letter word that many use as the answer to what is the point of life. The follow up question — “How can you be happy?” — is usually met with a blank stare, so here’s my study of the subject. The most important thing: happiness is not a mood, it’s a journey — like the weather vs. the climate.
- Happy the mood, vs the pursuit of happiness
- The Three Types of Happy
- Enjoyment is Pleasure++
- The Equations of Happy
- The Pursuit of Happiness
- The Three of You
- Moments
- Your Idle Loop
- Mood
- Other Resources
Happy the mood, vs the pursuit of happiness
A few ways I frame the difference:
- Happiness isn’t the mood — it’s the journey toward happiness. It’s a direction, not a destination.
- Your mood is the weather: a sunny day, a winter storm. The pursuit of happiness builds the climate — Tropical Wonderland vs. Arctic Circle. Fairbanks has a harsh climate but can still have some warm days; Hawaii is a super climate (or so I’m told) that still gets the odd day of bad weather. A few warm days don’t change a harsh climate.
- The pursuit of happiness isn’t just a journey — it’s a skill you get better at.
The Three Types of Happy
Pleasure through Consumption
The joy of consumption — eating chocolate, watching TV, procrastinating. This joy is like sweet food: a jolt of pleasure that goes quickly and leaves you wanting more.
At its core, pleasure is simply relief from tension—release from what you cannot hold within. This is why even the crudest bodily pleasures can feel so intense.
The Akbar-Birbal Story on Pleasure
Emperor Akbar once asked his courtiers what the greatest pleasure in life was. Various answers came—wealth, power, sex, fine food. Birbal declared it was defecating. Akbar was so offended by this crude answer that he told Birbal he would be executed unless he could prove it.
Birbal arranged a royal camping trip in the wilderness. He made sure Akbar was fed lavishly—rich foods and plenty of drink—but there were no toilet facilities anywhere. To make matters worse, Birbal surrounded the camp with a ring of women, so the emperor couldn’t simply relieve himself in the bushes without profound embarrassment. Days passed. The pressure built unbearably. Finally, when Akbar could hold it no longer and was allowed proper relief, the pleasure was so overwhelming that he immediately admitted Birbal had won. The greatest pleasure truly was release from what you cannot hold within—and Birbal kept his head.
The Prophet on Pleasure
From the prophet:
Or have you only pleasure, and the lust for pleasure, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master? Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires. Verily the lust for pleasure murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.
(In the original, this passage is about comfort, not pleasure.)
Satisfaction Through Flow, Production, and Accomplishing Hard Things
Brooks defines satisfaction with a simple formula: Satisfaction = What you have ÷ What you want. You increase satisfaction by achieving goals OR by wanting less.
Flow happens when you’re doing something challenging enough to keep you engaged, but easy enough to support progress. This joy sustains for hours—you look up and realize you’ve just spent 4 hours deep in the work.
Accomplishing hard things builds satisfaction that lasts. The struggle is part of what makes achievement meaningful.
NOTE: Binge watching TV is probably not flow, it’s addiction.
Meaning Through Identity, Purpose, and Self-Actualization
The joy of identity, purpose, and actualization. This happens when you are supporting your identity. The doing can be miserable, but the satisfaction of being who you want to be is powerful, and lasts and lasts. Even thinking about your identity can sustain you.
Enjoyment is Pleasure++
Arthur Brooks explains that pleasure and enjoyment aren’t the same. Pleasure happens to you; enjoyment is something you create. Pleasure is fleeting (like eating ice cream alone), while enjoyment lasts because it combines pleasure with two essential elements:
Enjoyment = Pleasure + People + Memory
Example: Beer ads never show someone drinking alone—they show friends together, creating memories. That’s because advertisers know people buy enjoyment, not just pleasure.
See <div style=”margin-bottom: 0.5rem” class=”summary-link body-only” href=”/build-life-you-want”
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Joy is Different from Happy
A major part of my identity is bringing people joy, so here is my deep dive on joy.
The Equations of Happy
A good summary of happiness breaks it into a few equations:
- Subjective Well-being = Genes + Circumstances + Life
- Life = Purpose + Friends + Family + Work + Hobby
- Satisfaction = What you have / What you want
The Pursuit of Happiness
The pursuit of happiness is a skill you practice, not a mood you catch. Here’s an interesting take on the pursuit of happiness, broken into three parts I work on.
Inner Peace
State of mind where you maintain freedom (ability to choose). Especially the freedom to choose avoiding suffering (the meaning made of mental pain), and anxiety (desire to control).
Getting what you want, in the pleasure sense, is not freedom. For example, a junkie wants a hit of heroin, and will do whatever is required to get it. When the fix is delivered, the junkie is not free.
However, getting what you want in the “identity sense” probably is freedom.
Passion
An intense emotional response (either positive or negative) toward an aspect of reality, for which there is an automatic experience of value.
Passion (i.e., being passionate about something) is synonymous with caring and suffering (from the Latin word passiō which means suffering).
To find your passion, follow your curiosity, and build new skills and hobbies
Compassion
Compassion is about removing suffering, and accepting people as they are. This applies both to others and to yourself.
When someone throws a rock at you, you don’t get mad at the rock, you get mad at the person. But no one wants to throw a rock at you they likely did it due to their suffering. So, just as you don’t get mad at the rock, don’t get mad at the person, get mad at their suffering.
Compassion can be broken down with a time dimension.
| Time | Behavior | Practice | Behavior Definition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Past | Forgiveness | Humility | Give up hope for a better past |
| Present | Acceptance | Gratefulness | Recognizing you have received more than your fair share |
| Future | Hope | Patience | Believe the future can be better than the present |
- When people behave poorly (in your mind), it is due to their suffering.
- Compassion clarifies the person’s suffering, not the person, is the source of the problem. Suffering is unacceptable. The person is acceptable (see getting to yes, hard on problems soft on people).
- Love, especially as applied to children, is the highest form of compassion a 11/10.
- Sounds like the fundamental attribution error: When you do something wrong, you attribute to circumstance, when others do thing wrong you attribute you malice/incompetence/personality.
The Three of You
A week ago, I was at a gala, and I ate a few chocolate truffles because they made me happy. I suspect it was wonderful, but honestly I don’t remember if that was the case. Even worse, as I try to button up my pants and the pants are too tight, I’m feeling quite unhappy about eating the truffles.
In the above paragraph there were three “I”’s or “selves” being referenced. The present experiencing self, the future remembering self, and the future experiencing self. To concisely refer to these three selves we’ll call them the experiencing self, the remembering self, and the future self.
As you think of three different selves there are two big questions. First, when you thinking about the costs and benefits of an action, think through the cost and benefits for the different selves. Second, decide which of the three selves you want to optimize for.
With luck your present self enjoys this post, your future self remembers enjoying the post, and this prompts your future self to re-read and enjoy the post again.
Here’s how to serve each of the three selves — and turn pleasure into enjoyment (pleasure + people + memory):
Anticipate (the future self)
Position and anchor experiences with others. For example this incredible sign:
If you came here to have fun you will. If not, you won’t.
Be committed to having a great experience, not attached to a specific one. You can’t control the exact experience, but you can maximize your influence—especially by sharing it with others and framing it as memorable.
Novelty is what sticks. A first-time experience encodes hard; routine blurs together—I remember my first trip somewhere, but last Tuesday is gone. So when I want a day to be memorable, I deliberately break the pattern: a new place, a new dish, a detour off the usual route.
Savor (the experiencing self)
Be present in the moment—being present is the memory-making act. A memory only forms if you encode it, and you can’t encode what you didn’t attend to. A phone in your hand during the moment kills that: you’re not there to lay the memory down. Notice what you’re experiencing. Share observations with others—this adds the “people” and “memory” components while you’re still in the experience.
Capture a little, on purpose. One photo, or a line in my journal, helps the memory consolidate. But doom-photographing the whole thing does the opposite—it pulls me out of the moment and weakens the very memory I’m trying to keep.
Reminisce (the remembering self)
Actively recall experiences with the people who shared them. This is why looking at photos with friends is more enjoyable than alone—you’re recreating the “people + memory” formula that made it enjoyment in the first place.
Peak-End Rule
We remember according to the peak-end rule: the average of the peak moment and the final moment. This is why you should end your vacations with something awesome (as opposed to fighting with your family). Read the other way, peak-end is a memory-design tool: engineer one peak and a good ending on purpose. The most cited example comes from the world of colonoscopies. Normally the colonoscopy takes 60 minutes and ends with ‘maximum pain’; if the surgeon artificially extends it to 90 minutes at low pain, the patient remembers the whole thing as less painful—even though it contained the painful colonoscopy followed by additional, less painful colonoscopy.
Moments
Most of life is auto-pilot (think about how a 2 hour movie, cover years of life). Think about how you drive somewhere and have no idea how you got home. Think about what you had for breakfast yesterday, or even today.
The things you remember are moments. Optimize for them.
Your Idle Loop
A related idea, with its own page — what your mind does when it’s not busy:
Mood
A very related topic is mood.
