Your 60 Second Guide to Happiness

We all have needs. And we all have to regularly top up those needs.

You don’t breathe enough to last you forever, nor do you eat enough either. And you certainly don’t love enough to last you forever.  

All our needs - food, drink, air, love, intimacy - must be topped up regularly.

Many of us live with the anxiety of one day losing the thing which fulfils our needs: 

• My partner who loves me now will no longer love me in the future. 
• My job that provides me security today I might lose tomorrow. 
• My attractiveness that brings me all this attention will one day fade. 
• My creative spark that energises me will one day extinguish. 
  

And we cling to the object that fulfils that need:

• We try to make our lover love us. 
  
• We try to make the job who we are. 
  
• We fight or mask our signs of ageing. 
  
• We hold onto people and things that make us feel valued and don’t let go. 
  

We become shackled to people and objects. When our only means of feeling valued are our looks or our money, we become prisoners to our appearance and money.

If we feel like our lover is the only person who can make us feel this way, we hold onto them with our affections, chaining ourselves to them:

“What is life worth living without you?”
“I just can’t imagine living without you!”  

Thing is, we mistake that which provides for our needs for the needs themselves:

• You don’t need your lover. You need to feel loved. 
  
• You don’t need your job. You need to feel secure. 
  
• You don’t need to be popular. You need to feel valued. 
  

All these needs are met in many ways. All you need is confidence in your ability to meet your needs:

• Your lover, she may leave you, whether by death or by betrayal. But there will eventually be another. 
  
• That job, you may get fired. But there will eventually be another opportunity. 
  
• Your status or appearance or popularity or relevance may fade, but there are always more ways to feel valued. 
  

Studies show that people who become paraplegics are no less happy than anyone else. Our minds always find a way to have our needs met.  

Question.

What if you woke up tomorrow with no money, no family, no friends, no partner?

I don’t know what I’d do to get money that first day. And I know it would be sad and difficult and lonely.

But I also know that I would eventually be fine. I would cry and struggle. But I would keep going. And eventually I would be fine. If everything was taken away from me, while I would mourn my loss, I would live on.

Happiness is not preventing losses in your life. Happiness is learning to adapt to them.

It’s not the people and objects that fulfill the needs in your life that make you happy. You make you happy.

If everything you had was taken away from you, would you continue going forward or would you give up?