How to be happy? tools and approaches?

Post Reply New Topic

Many Aspies are unhappy (often because interaction with other people is difficult, causing various unhappinesses).

MasterSynaps appears happy (see e.g. http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp5278377 ... t=#5278377) and mentions (he has said fine for me to publish this) as fundamentals;

1. CHOOSE to be happy. Every moment we are faced the choice of how we feel about what is going on. If we choose to be happy, we are happy. All we need do is make that choice an ongoing habit.
2. Impediments will come up: Accept and let go. When we notice that some thing is making the choice to be happy difficult, we either have to do something about it, or if it's an unchangeable factor of life then we must accept that that's the way it is and adapt, let go and get on with things.
3. Be compassionate. I personally find the more compassionate (positive responsiveness) one becomes the better one feels about one self, which is a great place to start when looking to modify your life to achieve and maintain happiness.
4. Perspective. When we contemplate the immensity of the universe, it's pretty damn amazing to be conscious here now, and this to me makes every moment, even those that are unpleasant a thing to treasure. A unique adventure in the whole cosmos.

He says that how people apply these fundamentals to life will be an individual process.

He accepts he can be sad at times due to a particular event etc, and still be basically happy (at a more general level).

He identifies himself as happy as the default, and if he notices that he is not happy he then resets. He monitors and resets by; "Remembering to be happy. I don't know if it works for everyone but to wear a "Mona Lisa" smile seems to sooth the mind. It's largely a process of mindfulness, where one develops the facility to step back and analyse at will, ones motivations and thought processes. It's largely a way of self reprogramming. It's kind of Bhuddist"

He drinks coffee and alcohol. He is male, aged 57, lives alone in a forest c.2km from anyone else, has no children, and has a girlfriend he sees once a week and holidays with. He has health problems, and lives on disability.

He seems to have a life structure with low human interaction, but with at least one good key relationship. Perhaps this is unusual; many Aspies may have either (a) low human interaction and no good key relationships, or (b) good key relationships but also lots of human interaction (e.g. in a busy family and social life) that wipes them out.

Maybe the fact that it's been his clear choice, to set his life up in the way that it is, is a factor in his happiness.



Is anyone else out there happy? - and if so what tools and approaches are you using to achieve that? Many thanks (P.s. I am not a researcher, just an AS man trying (and have been trying for a long time) to find ways to be happier).

a notably melancholy man named abe lincoln, once said "a man's about as happy as he makes his mind up to be." so that is my strategy, to take advantage of the fact that most human minds can only hold one discrete thought in working memory at any given time, and chase out bad [unhappy] thoughts with better thoughts. this takes some stubborn discipline but it can be done.

This man's head seems to be on his shoulders, held up high... I am happy for him!

Somewhat recently I took this same approach to life after a lot of thinking to myself and listening to many philosophy podcasts, and I am doing a lot better because of it. I have severe depression and anxiety due to not only a chemical imbalance but a life long history of many kinds of abuse and neglect + I have more issues but I'd have to make a list if I were to talk about them all, but rather than wallowing in negativity, I decided to do something about it, to better myself. Change the way I look at life.

He is very correct in choosing to be happy. It does work, although it can take a lot to make it work. What's that saying, oh yeah it's "Practice makes perfect". Many times we all have chances to get down about things, some things are unavoidable, but what some people do not realize (or want to do), is that they also have a choice to brush many of the the bad thoughts off their shoulders and simply choose to be happy. It's very easy to get down about things, but in the moment, it can seem oh so hard to simply say "No" to negative thoughts, hell for some it can even be an addiction problem, there is something masturbatory about feeling so down at times.... And that feeling makes some people want to feel negative, although, it's not actually what we want, I guess it's a trick our mind plays on some of us. Some people are addicted to that feeling, perhaps, for them it is one of the only feelings that makes them really "feel" most times...

New habits take time and practise, as you all have mentioned. It is /was the same for me. But as it becomes habitual it mostly becomes easier.

One other observation I use to help in happiness is that life can be difficult at times, why make it harder by having neg thoughts about it and ourselves?