Random Musings 102 : Strategy for Happiness

कर्म करो, फल की इच्छा ना करो ।

-- श्री कृष्ण , भागवत गीता , वालमीकी ।

I really love this ancient Indian advice. Living life while trying to achieve hard goals.. the only way to remain happy in the face of failure is to focus on the process. But this succinct piece of advice really needs more elaboration. Here are my two cents :

Note : If you find this post, too weird or abstract. Look at this reddit thread : here

To focus on the process you need to make the process enjoyable. However hard, or difficult, or bad things may be it is possible to redirect your feelings to be able to enjoy  the process. In this case it is helpful to be reminded of Lori Gottleib's quote : "It's impossible to know and understand someone well, and not find something about them that you like."

My strategy : Try to identify specifically things that you like and do not like. Focus on the things you like. Try to increase the complexity of the task/process so that the things you like are more frequent and better. And the things you don't like are less frequent and less annoying. Generally it's the things you don't like that are the problem. So, here, let me focus on that bit.

1. Try to go deeper/more-detailed into the things that you've identified as problematic. Exactly what are the aspects you don't like. Experiment. Explore.
2. Now try again to change those aspects of the problem. Or failing that try to change your feelings towards them. Trying to view the negative aspect as a game helps.
3. Meanwhile, try to change the process and the goal itself. Try to adapt both yourself (your beliefs) and the world to coincide, to get to a happy state.
4. Failing all the above, try to develop patience. Wait for the game to change.