How to achieve happiness? any tools and approaches ideas?

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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).

Last edited by JCJC777 on 20 Mar 2013, 8:05 am, edited 2 times in total.

Yes.

It helps to have activities that allow you to reset--even better if you are really good at them--such as being able to play Scrabble and routinely make Bingos. I also play darts and garden--the entire neighborhood loves the flowering plants in our yard.

My level of interaction is a bit higher than most Aspies, but it rarely becomes draining, now that I know I'm an Aspie and can take appropriate actions when necessary.

But, I have the distinct advantage in not only being gifted, but being able to use my gifts to help others.

just start laughing now and continue laughing for the rest of your life.


seriously however, there is no real recipe for happiness. it depends upon your expectations from life really. there is no accounting for taste, and peoples expectations stem from their tastes.

i am quite content with my life's procedure, and whilst the word "content" may not be as euphorically intense as the word "happy", it is also not so precarious and fragile.

i think the most important element of the non existent recipe for happiness is "comfortableness in ones own skin".
embarrassment is something i have never felt (it is a "complex emotion" that is beyond my capacity to feel), but i am quite aware (theoretically) of what the experience of embarrassment entails.

i think that many people evaluate themselves based on their comparisons of themselves with other people, and when they "strut their stuff", and they find that they can not outshine someone else in their social circle (pertaining to the matter that the embarrassed person tried to use as a "professional on a complex soapbox" mechanism to appear impressive), they feel embarrassment. so i define embarrassment as a feeling of ego deflation coupled with a regret that the embarrassed person has about pitting himself against someone who's abilities he did not bother to gauge.

i am quite content with the way things are in my life, and i do not care if i am smarter or stupider than anyone, and i do not care if i am prettier or uglier than anyone else. i do not care if i am richer or poorer than anyone else either.

i do not care about the outside world, and i never think about myself with respect to them. i feel sorry for people who are driven to suicidal ideas because they are so unhappy being alone with themselves. i like to be in my own company because i never run out of things to think. i can think about new and interesting questions and ideas forever, and i am happy to be in my own world where no one else ever is interested in the microcosmic details of my experience of my day.


here is an old song that was written and performed by an australian company to be an overlay to a surfing film.
it was so well written that it attained a place in the charts even though it was just a promo song.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Znpg9uk0j6E[/youtube]
just listen to it with your eyes closed please?

I was thinking Buddhist also, it is an entire religion dedicated to teaching the path to happiness.

Not that anything is foolproof, 8 years dedicated study gave me a solid grip on how to let things happen and even be joyous at afflictions as it means I am alive.
But going bipolar in the dark of winter still happens and I get very depressed. Must be chemical as I can be an elightened Buddhist when the sun is out for more than 7 hours a day, I cannot overcome the 3 hour days.

8 years of training do not fit in a forum post, but happiness is not a casual state, it takes foresight and habits. As well as luck.

The time involved in applying the things one needs to do to achieve happiness is not mentioned in the quotes above.

I've been practising and refining for years, and SLOWLY been getting better at it.

So is Christianity. Both are for self-pleasure, but opposite sources. The source of pleasure for a Christian is to do the will of God over and above what self wants. This concept is unfathomable for people who have never experienced the love of God.

Fortunately happiness is not dependant on religious belief, and belief is not necessarily a path to happiness. We see all around us hatred and turmoil issuing from the religious

If you find happiness in your faith, good for you. It didn't work for me. There are so many glaring inconsistencies between what Christianity (mainstream anyway) claims and what we now know is the actual way of things.

I don't think this is the right thread for THAT discussion.

As for Buddhism, I don't go for the silly clothes and a lot of the ritual, but they don't claim a god, which to me is a good thing.



Don't they put that down to a decrease in serotonin levels? I have heard that spending time under a sun lamp can help with that, tricks the system into thinking the days are longer. Can't confirm that it works. I've had experience going from short winter days to the very long days of a Scottish summer and getting high as a kite for a couple of weeks.

Maybe the hardball issue here is that if our life experience is net negative, then we're going to be unhappy. So we have to find ways to get our net life experience to positive.

MasterSynaps ideas help in that, particularly in eliminating or reducing the impact of the unhappinesses we experience (e.g. the terrible social experiences for Aspies)

But maybe too we need to find experiences that are not just an escape from negative interactions (e.g. disappearing into our special interests), but are actually genuine positives.

The area that is giving me a subtle but deep positive is meditation. We can go into our own minds, and we're away from social interaction etc, but we can find also that it is a genuinely positive life experience in itself too. (I note that Steve Jobs and Ray Dalio (created and runs world's largest hedge fund) were both meditators). MasterSynaps comments about 'contemplating the immensity of the universe' may also be relevant here.

It's inappropriate for me to share how I achieve happiness, but not inappropriate for someone else to? Buddhism is a religious belief, but yet it's not referred to as 'THAT' discussion. Atheism is also a religious belief, but yet contemporary society generally welcomes it with open arms. It takes as much faith to believe one is their own god (source of happiness) as it does for all the other varieties in existence.

A woman I know whose 48 yr. old Aspie son committed suicide told me she wished her son got to know me before he killed himself. She wished that he had the chance to know about my faith. She knew I once was suicidal and it was God's gift of faith that saved me.

Nothing is more valuable than life. Jesus came so that we could live life abundantly. It saddens me to see the kind of suffering people go through. We all must walk our own path and accept what becomes of our choices.

Christianity; a path to happiness. AHAHAAHAH

You know what, you should read the description of this sub-forum again.


If you want to act immature like that you should go post in the Adolescent forum. Or have the decency to explain why Christianity as a path to happiness is a laughable idea. (I consider myself an atheist so this is not about being offended by what you think, but I find your mocking attitude in this mature section very annoying.)

OK here we go.

Please reread what I wrote. The sentence quoted referred to the inconsistencies that I find in Christianity, and that this thread is not about THAT.

Although Buddhism is often called a religion, it isn't, though it has, in some forms, taken on the trappings of one

Atheism is NOT a religious belief, on the contrary, it is a lack of religious belief. It does not mean that one thinks of oneself as ones own god.

I wrote " If you find happiness in your faith good for you. It didn't work for me"

Now , if it is all possible it would be good if we refrain from plunging this topic into the miasma of religion v atheism, it is about aids to happiness for those who feel they need a little help. OK?

Never explain yourself. Your friends don’t need it and your enemies won’t believe it.