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Okay, the forum is "Life Planning," and I`ve heard of people called a "life coach." As a philosopher, I`m fascinated with these kinds of vague terms nobody seems to understand. I also believe that philosophy these days, generally is bankrupt, with academic philosophers having become so inter-bred as to remind me of the toothless vagrants lost in the Ozark mountains.

Life and philosophy are fundamentally intertwined. Philosophy arises from the organization of knowledge. It originally involved teaching, learning, schools, and so forth, but modern people tend to believe it`s now about abstract questions of metaphysics, and impractical problems to which nobody has any solutions. Not true.

Philosophy is a way to place a context around random information. It`s a way to make organization out of the chaos of daily life, observations, thoughts, problems, questions, and goals. It includes the nature and meaning of terms we hope we understand, but upon further examination, we discover are empty words: like "happiness."

Happiness differs from joy in that happiness is a moving (dynamic) event. You move through days with happiness increasing or decreasing according to....something. Joy is a momentary (static) event; a reaction to....something.

Ayn Rand proposed, and I concur, that happiness is made up of a handful of specific "target" activities. The closer we come to gaining or accomplishing those goals, the more happy we are. The less we achieve in those goals, the less happy we are. Those areas of interest include:
* Productive work
* Human relationships
* Interaction with art
* Creative outlet
* Sensual intimacy

These aren`t the only areas, but we can each break down our daily life and ask specific questions about each target. For example, "Was I productive today? Did I accomplish something?" "Did I interact with anyone today and was it good or bad?"

If the answer is yes, we can almost (not quite) assign a number value to the yes, no, maybe, not sure, responses. Same with each other area. By averaging out the results to each question, we really can come up with a quantifiable sense--almost a number--of just how happy we are.

The problem is that everyone claims they want to be happy, but almost nobody knows how to define that state. How do you know if you`re happy or unhappy if you can`t state what it is you`re trying to be? It`s like "success," where the best people come up with is that success differs for each person. So what? That doesn`t help anyone determine if they`re successful or not. So they toss it into the grab-bag of "feelings," and leave it as an entirely subjective mishmash.

Philosophy ought to be involved in pointing out pathways, asking real questions, and offering at least some kind of objective solutions. It isn`t about sitting in some dank classroom, yammering about the difference between "thee and thou," or how many angels fit on a pin. Philosophers ask questions about "what if," and scientists, inventors, business people, and everyone else go out and try to make it happen. Philosophers are supposed to challenge the status quo, "activists" go out and change the world. Philosophy is supposed to offer a sense of certainty and understanding, not promote uncertainty and confusion.

Happiness, joy, and success, all are words. The realm of human understanding that deals with words is Semantics, a division of philosophy. Without words, we can`t think...we can`t retain our thoughts. And without definitions, words have no meaning. Consider Helen Keller and her inability to even define her sense of "I" without language.

And so, happiness is a judgement or evaulation of where you stand in relation to the various themes of life. Joy is your response when you encounter the ideal. That ideal is your own interpretation of an ideal, but when you encounter it in the real world, your response is in that moment. Happiness is an active attempt to change the world around you. Joy is a passive response to the changes you`ve made or that you encounter.

I have not found “happiness” in most of my life until I decided that my current state of live is the baseline of happiness. Some would consider that to be settling for less. To be honest I don’t care what “they” think.

There are people in the world, some are friends of mine, which find it very easy to make money. They buy fancy cars, motorcycles, computers, and even houses. I wanted to be “happy” like they are.

Eventually I came to realize that what I saw as happiness was making me more angry rather than happy. I also began to realize that my life may not hold wealth in terms of stuff, but I have wealth in other areas. I have always been good in keeping healthy, creative expression, interacting with new faces, understanding other people’s intent without knowing all the facts, and a few other things. This wealth I hold has kept me safe and clear from scams and other worldly negative problems. Financial wealth has always been my challenge, although friends have literally asked me… “Vince, why do so many [financial] bad  things happen to you? You have no luck.”

By changing my point of view about what happiness is to me, I have begun to feel more satisfied with life. Just as an example, I have realized, it is better to live in a trailer park and eat lobster each night (or what ever your favorite, expensive food is), than to live in a beautiful house and wonder if the bag of rice will last till the end of the month.

What’s my point? Happiness is a state of mind that you chose. It’s not easy to do, but it’s easier to live a tough life if you are in a happy state of mind, rather than always searching for happiness. Now… when I achieve a financial windfall, I feel joy. When it goes away, I am still happy.



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Vincent Wilcox (a.k.a. KRAKR)
Drummer
My band: Letters Make Words

As Alton Brown, my favorite guru and Master of Kitchen-ness teaches, "I`m only here for the food!" I`m in total agreement that what you DO with your daily life is going to be much more important than how you appear to others.

The problem isn`t that happiness is a state of mind; of course it is. Instead, the problem is how does one affect their state of mind? How exactly does someone who isn`t happy make a choice to be happy, then have that happen? It`s easy enough to say, "Okay, from now on I`m going to ignore other opinions and just focus on my own happiness." That`s the current state of most people`s emotions.

My interest is in how exactly does one accomplish happiness. I`ve been interested in the action points, the tools people can use to first evaluate how happy are they really, then particularly what can they do to change their feeling.

I believe most people in today`s culture live in fear. Some of that comes from the barrage of fearful news and events we all see around us in the media. But at a deeper level, so many people are afraid someone will point to them as an imposter. "Hey! You can`t run a business! What background and credentials do YOU have! You`re not a portly old man with a big black cigar, therefore you can`t possibly be important enough to run a business!"

It`s not true. Nobody, in all of human history, has ever been born with the knowledge of how to do anything...including how to tie their own shoelaces! Nor do people have an instinct for how to create a business and run it. Instead, we learn by watching others, experience, education, and inspiration. It takes time. Unfortunately, in modern society where so much "work" takes place in mysterious glass-faced buildings people point to and say "corporation," we don`t have much of that learning by example.

To break down that fear, make it understandable, and to provide specific measurements of those ephemeral feelings, I think we should have a sort of objective, or scientific, if you will, ruler. That`s the point of having five overall themes to examine.

Yours, Kathy`s, and my utter enjoyment of lobster, regardless of the meal being in an unaffordable restaurant, or a wholly-owned trailer home, speaks to the sensual intimacy theme. "Sensual" means the senses, of which taste is very important. The butter running down one`s cheek and chin goes to the tactile sensation. It`s all sensory--sensual.

But then, what about human contact and inter-relations? What about productive work, with it`s accompanying acknowledgement, validation, and respect? How about the mental stimulation of good music, or a fine story, or seeing a new painting or sculpture? And what about making something that`s never been seen before, even if only a new recipe for brownies?

Most people can give you a general feeling of how much happiness they are or aren`t experiencing at any given moment. The problem is in making deliberate, conscious changes to that vague feeling. The first step, in my thinking, is to have a way to know more specifically how happy you are, in a measured way, at any given moment. That begins with an objective definition of happiness that would apply to everyone, not just one individual person. Impossible? No, it`s a function of philosophy---good philosophy, not what passes for philosophy in today`s world.

Craig -

I understand your point and also admire your desire to philosophically create the all-elusive objective definition of happiness.  I am not convinced this can be done; since for there to be an "objective" definition, it must not be influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice.  And are not these some of the things with which we measure happiness, whether deliberately or not?

I submit that although this is the object of philosophy, it is not typically the reality of it.  Still, it makes for good discussion!

R-





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Quaerite Primum Regnum

"There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line."
~ Oscar Levant ~

Twitter: @rossb

Alright, that`s an excellent point, and cuts right to the heart of distinguishing "useful" from "academic" philosophy. I think the problem is in the word "objective." This connects with the belief that logic and intellect are somehow entirely alien or separate from feelings and emotions. It also associates with the rarely considered distinction between a feeling versus an emotion.

The major problem of modern society is non-specific generalization arising out of people foregoing critical thinking. For example, a common platitude nowadays is that "everyone has a right to their own opinion." That`s technically true, but there`s a big difference between an informed and uninformed opinion. The word "right" is being glossed over, and implies not only the right to hold an opinion, but also to forcibly mandate the truth of that opinion and ensuing actions onto others.

The specific use of words comes again under the heading of Semantics.Yet how often do people so casually throw out the entire foundation of reasoning, saying, "Oh...that`s just some dumb semantic distinction!" (They intend to mean it`s sophistry, but that`s another article.)

Is happiness a feeling? Or is it an emotion, and what`s the difference? I propose that a feeling is sensory feedback, based on actual perception of reality. "I feel my cat`s fur and it`s very soft."

An emotion is an evaluation, composed of all the subjective judgements we make relative to a similar experience: Do I like this, or dislike it.

"Like" and "dislike," in the context of pleasure and pain, are totally subjective and require no justification at all. In this usage, what you "feel" when your cat is killed is not at all directly connected with your physical senses. "I feel terrible that my cat is dead." Which of the six senses are you using, other than you see a dead cat? (It`s stll a mystery how a visual pattern can induce an adrenaline rush to the physical body.) But that`s not at all what we mean when we "feel" the pain of sudden loss and grief.

Happiness is an emotion, not a feeling. The problem is with the English language, that we have no commonly used verb for emotion. "I emote happy?" No, that doesn`t work very well, and so we can only say "I feel happy." And yet ancient Chinese wisdom makes a distinction between the head (intellect), the heart (emotion), and the body (feeling).

Individualism proposes that emotions, being evaluative judgements, can be reduced (this isn`t reductionism) to their variables. It`s a first step toward artificial life (predicated by artificial intelligence). We can assign binary values to every component of an experience. I won`t take the time here, but the point is that by only considering emotions as different from feelings, we can derive an entirely different perspective on such "indefinable" things as happiness, honor, love, joy, hatred, and so forth. We can at least draw a line between objective and subjective experience.

Would you say that feeling pain when you touch a fire is subjective? In one context yes, on the basis that how much pain you feel and how badly it hurts is your own experience. Is it unique? No, normal human beings feel the same pain. It`s only the interpretation of intensity that differs, and there, within the highly contstained limits of being human (not dog, fly, or ragweed). Enough pain and you die. No pain and you feel nothing. So there is a limit...a border to the intensity.

But in another context we can objectify the feeling of pain, saying that (again, for normal function) ALL human beings will feel pain when their skin is being damaged.

I propose that happiness, being an evaluation, follows rules of evaluation common to all human minds. Otherwise, nobody would know what I mean when I ask "are you happy?"

I`m not suggesting that "I" can generate a number signifying the intensity of YOUR happiness. Instead, I`m saying that YOU can utilize a set of questions to join your objective search for personal answers with your subjective sense of your own intensity.

So rather than asking yourself, "am I happy," and vaguely guessing "I dunno...I suppose so," there`s an alternate method. Ask about your own daily experience relative to the above five themes. I think you would agree that a question like "Have you spoken with a human being today" provides an objective answer, right? So let`s temporarly limit the answers to yes or no.

What I`m proposing is that if you answer "no" to all five areas of activity, then you almost assuredly are unhappy. If you claim and feel happy, then we can introduce the field of psychology, and appropriate or inappropriate "affect." Although people still claim that psychology and psychiatry are purely subjective, most reasonable people agree that these two fields fall into a blended area of both objective AND subjective interaction. Would you agree?

Interaction. Without it their is unhappiness. With it there is both the chance of opposition to the individual claim to right thinking, as well as the elation that comes from collaboration and the ensuing success of a project. I would rather gain 500 erroneous answers to the problem or question, and find one perfect answer that encourages the project forward...than to have very little interaction based on the assumption that the asker is to be glorified ahead of the project and its quest for answers that first and foremost reflect the needs and desires of its intended customers. Psychologists tell us there are, built into each of us, five basic needs. These needs are for: 1. Security 2. Recognition 3. Love 4. Adventure 5. Creativity . Happiness therefore is striking a balance between these areas as we all question how much life is defined by "me" and how much is defined by "we". 

Daniel,
Let`s compare:
* Productive work
* Human relationships
* Interaction with art
* Creative outlet
* Sensual intimacy

In a modern world, our method of obtaining security (not the emotional security, necessarily) often derives from productive work and the rewards. Recognition almost always requires there be another human being (and associated relationship of some sort), right?

Where things get dicey are in such undefined terms as "love." Although I suppose we could elevate a desire for Adventure to a global necessity, I`d tend to subsume it into productive work. After all, many people get seriously anxious when they`re having an adventure, or they choose not to be adventurous at all, so how can that be a global necessity?

Another way to ask this question might be, "Are you certain of your level of happiness? On what basis do you hold that certainty?"

To paraphrase a famous Supreme Court Justice quote on pornography:  I can`t really define happiness, but I`ll know it when I find it.

I think happiness is deeply personal; and internal.  It doesn`t come from external sources like other people, achievement, circumstances, or inputs. 

I believe that we succeed because we`re happy, not that we are happy because we succeed. 

I mean let`s be real-- ever meet a miserable person.  Hand that person $1 billion dollars and they`ll still be a miserable SOB.  I could name some prominent examples, and you`d all have to agree- no amount of success, wealth, Mr. right, Mrs. right, sunny days, or happy music will help them.

My secret to happiness is not making happiness a goal or a personal value in life.  I`m a Gen Exer and it`s fascinating, and a little sad to observe the hangover of the baby boom`s "just do what makes you happy" feel-good philosophy.

Now study after study reveals the obvious-- self-esteem comes from doing your best, not telling yourself or being told you`re the best.  The hardest working loser is happier than the flake with a Blue Ribbon that knows s/he doesn`t deserve it.  It doesn`t come from not keeping score, it come from accepting the score-- win or lose-- and knowing you did your best, and/or knowing what to do next time.

Happiness is often the end result of starting, and sticking through thick and thin and much less often the result of quitting to pursue some vague notion of "happiness" off down some exciting, unfamiliar road.

Life doesn`t lend itself well to people that try to keep all its advantages at once.  We entrepreneurs love the new, the exciting, the fun-- we`re very often "shiny object" people.  We are easily bored, have short attention spans, and are impatient.  We like the excitement of starting, but often lack the stamina to see it all the way through-- that`s sometimes good, sometimes not so good.  Everyone has a role to play.  As long as we acknowledge that`s who we are, and we create an exit strategy from day one- we`ll be OK.  (That`s what I like about the SUN philosophy of planning your business around your life-- but you still gotta PLAN). 

Which brings me to what Thoreau called "Living Deliberately".  Plan your business around your life- yes.  But plan your life around WHO YOU ARE.  Very few people are in conscious contact with who they are.  Live a life on conscious-- know that the next big idea isn`t going to excite you in five years, or past about $50 million in revenue.  PLAN NOW to get OUT before that boredom sets in.  You owe it to yourself, those who`ve ventured with you, and those you love around you.

Prioritize your life.  Don`t be an unbalanced workaholic.  You might like, even love your work-- but nobody ever said on their death bed I wish I`d spent more time working.

I think happiness also comes from a deep sense of purpose and/or personal mission.  My mission is simple- I want to leave a legacy of faith for my family for generations.  I love my business(es), I love my work, but it`s not my life. They are all a means to an end.  A means to create time to spend with, and money to spend on creating dynamic, memorable experiences with people to impact them for Christ.

I didn`t have a lot of money growing up, but what my family spent money on when they did spend it-- was on experiences.  We went camping, we travelled, and those are the times I think about and remember.  We didn`t so much as have wonderful stuff under the tree at Christmas, but we always sacrificed to have wonderful people around it-- and a good meal, and  festive atmosphere.

Meeting my wife when we were both 13 on a church youth group trip across the country, was much more impactful that simply meeting her in a Sunday school room across town.  Getting to know her while we saw the Badlands, the Black Hills, San Francisco, Huntington Beach, Las Vegas, Wall Drug, Estes Park was much more memorable-- as were the lessons we learned, the music we listened to, and sang, etc.  Of, course I didn`t know I`d marry her when we were 13 years old (though I had a pretty good idea when I was 17, and by 21 we were engaged, and married at 22).

My point is my life is ABOUT something. It`s about something bigger than me, and that will outlive me.  I`m passionate about generations telling stories about the great, loving, and faithful way that God looked after us all; and I want to be one of the cornerstones in the legacy of faith for my family.  I want people that never knew me to have the business empire I`ve built, and see it in the context of the values that built it.  I want that empire to leave a mark on the world for the better.  I want the story of it to inspire, and energize new generations of entrepreneurs; because when you`re FREE, you`re free to live your life on your terms.  You`re free to live and instill your values in the things you create.

Anyway- as you can tell, my passion, my mission energize and drive me.

People that don`t understand us entreprenuers sometimes assume we`re obsessed with money.  I don`t know people who are more obsessed with money than people that don`t have enough.  My mission is to make the money irrelevant to my life.  To be completely free of the thought or worry of it.  To have it, and have it in such abundance that it just never really crosses my mind to think about whether or not I can afford something I want, or not.  If I want it, I buy it-- that simple.

To that end, I spend most of my time creating systems that generate money, a lot of money, and that do it automatically, predictably, and with minimal effort. 

Greedy?  Hardly.  Greedy is sitting in Church on Sunday "wishing" you could help the cause- build the building, feed the hungry, pay for the operation- and then going to work late, leaving work early, doing just enough to avoid being fired while you`re there, and going home and watching TV.  And that describes the vast majority of people, unfortunately.

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Paul Strauss
www.ChicagoSuperConference.com

What a rant.  I should not be allowed to sit home alone on Saturday.  Somebody get me outta here!

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Paul Strauss
www.ChicagoSuperConference.com

Alll-rightee then...! :-) Now see? Original thought, not simply pasting some random quotes, gets us a whole lot farther along.

Paul, consider what you`re saying (it`s not a rant, it`s having an opinion and being literate so as to write that opinion). On the one hand you`re saying that happiness is internal and doesn`t come from outside sources. On the other, you`re saying that the stimulus for happiness routinely comes from outside sources.

The problem I think we should try to solve is how to get away from the typical responses to the question, "are you happy?" The two main answers seem to be either, "I dunno...I s`pose," or "who can say? Nobody knows....it`s impossible to know."

And yet, there likely isn`t a single person who can`t give you an absolutely positive response to the question, "have you ever noticed if you`re happy or not?"

I`ve never said that happiness comes from outside sources. Happiness is a response to something. The question is only what is causing that response. The happiness itself is one thing. The response mechanism is entirely different. For example, if you touch a hot pot handle, your response is "Golly gee! I do believe that offers some serious pain, and I think I shall now say Poop, Oh Damn!"  (Or words to that effect)

But your body`s response has no words. It doesn`t take time to decide on proper terminology, censorship, and political correctness. The body sends a pulse through the nervous system and the brain interprets it as pain. Even the intensity level of pain has no particular value. Beyond the pain, everything else is a thought process, even though it may be at an unconscious level.

Stuff happens, to paraphrase a popular maxim. Okay, it happens, and either we notice or we don`t. We`re either present or not. We`re either aware of it or not. But what I`m saying is that if we`re unaware of what happens, the entire concept of being happy or sad about it is moot. If you don`t know that my line broke yesterday and I lost a 3lb. bass, it doesn`t enter into your life to think about whether my experience makes you happy or not.

Happiness is an ongoing status report, from your body, your emotional judgements, and your reasoned analysis. That status report filters upward from YOUR mind...nobody else`s mind, based on your life, your experiences, and what you like or don`t like.

When all that processing has taken place, the result is a "level" of happiness, unhappiness, or sadness.

I`m suggesting that there are five basic "areas" of life that continually cause us to make this ongoing evaluation. By understanding those "drivers," as corporate people say, we can develop a more clear view of our own level of happiness. Clarity of information, most would agree, is much more valuable than confused or vague information.

So much of our lives, all of us tend to act toward happiness, and feel frustration when we`re prevented from attaining that happiness. Just so, entrepreneurs try to act toward success, and become stressed when they`re prevented from attaining that success.

Another post will be a quest to define success. But THIS post is about trying to define happiness. How can you know if you`re happy if you don`t know what it is? If you "feel" instead of "think" your way through life, then each day is a brand new day, and your feelings will change your definition of happiness every new day.

Where and how will you make a commitment to "stick to something through thick and thin" if you can`t determine that it will produce happiness later, not right this instant? The whole concept of later-reward and long-term thinking is based on reason, not feelings. Who honors a contract based on their feeling like today would be an excellent day to honor a contract? So too with happiness: Unless you know what you`re searching for, you`ll likely never find it, and won`t recognize it if you stumble across it.