Have you ever had the desire to purchase a product or service. You feel it’s going to make your life so much better, so much so that you need to have it. Now that you feel that way, your current state is somewhat inadequate.
If you hadn’t seen that product or heard about that service, would you feel the same way? If you don’t go ahead with the purchase in that moment, and wait for a week or two, will you feel the same way? Speaking from my own experience, the desire passes, and the sense of inadequacy does too.
Superficial desires like this generate a sense of dissatisfaction, giving us a sense of inadequacy until we attain that thing. But even when we attain it, the sense of satisfaction is short lived and the phenomenon repeats itself, where we want the next thing to improve our life.
In these circumstances, the key to achieving satisfaction is delaying gratification. If one doesn’t desire something to improve their life, then they don’t feel they already have the tools to attain satisfaction.
So then, what does bring joy to our lives? Distinct from a readily finished thing, the process of working to attain something and improving your knowledge or condition in some way during the process generates happiness and satisfaction. While these can also be desires per se, the process required to achieve them, and the long-term value delivered generate sustained happiness. Examples of this are learning, a physical exercise program and completing a project involving any mix of cognition and skill.
We’re also mainly social animals, with varying degrees of introversion and extroversion. Studies show that even the most introverted of us are still happier being around other people. The life insurance mortality tables indicate that loneliness has a negative impact on longevity that is comparable to smoking. Just like achieving something through effortful growth, growing relationships generates satisfaction and happiness. Speaking for myself, people can be difficult. We have moods, humors, varying degrees of empathy, and different interests. Growing relationships with people is a skill, and learning to read other people’s emotions, be empathetic and benevolent are skills that time and effort to develop. Perhaps a good approach is to surround yourself with other that have similar value, though not necessarily similar interests, and work at growing friendships. These scenarios are where the whole is truly greater than the sum of the parts.
All of this is a long-winded way of saying that receiving attaining things that didn’t require any effortful endeavor will result in a repetitive pattern of feeling inadequacy and short-lived satisfaction. Learning to delay gratification in these circumstances is the key to avoiding this. This is only contradicted when the thing desired will remove a significant hardship in life. Think getting a cataract removed or getting back factuality of some function following an injury.
Focusing on attaining things through effortful endeavor involving learning, accomplishment and improvement will deliver sustained satisfaction and enduring acquisition of knowledge and skill.
Developing our relationships again requires effortful endeavor with the added benefit of spending time with people that share needs, desires, humor and passion.
So the TLDR summary → Delayed Gratification + Effortful Growth + Developing Relationship = Happiness