The 13 Big Ideas

1.       Happiness is not about deluding yourself

2.       We overvalue ourselves

3.       Using anger the right way

4.       Deliberate response to the world

5.       Emotional well-being is a skill to be trained

6.       Vengeance doesn’t bring well-being

7.       There’s a difference between freedom and drifting

8.       Don’t need to give up everything pleasurable to be happy; just need to be more deliberate about deciding what makes us happy

9.       Simplicity means more freedom and less distracting trivialities

10.   Happiness is proportional to wealth

11.   Need the ability to exert control over your life

12.   Always have hope; use current situation as a starting point

13.   Adaptability is way to overcome adversity

Happiness is not about deluding yourself

The search for happiness is not about looking at life through rose-colored glasses or blinding oneself to the pain and imperfections of the world. Nor is happiness a state of exaltation to be perpetuated at all costs; it is the purging of mental toxins, such as hatred and obsession, that literally poison the mind. It is also about learning how to put things in perspective and reduce the gap between appearances and reality.

As Etty Hillesum says so tersely: “That great obstacle is always the representation and never the reality.”9 The world of ignorance and suffering—called samsara in Sanskrit—is not a fundamental condition of existence but a mental universe based on our mistaken conception of reality.

Here is another example to illustrate our attachment to the idea of “mine.” You are looking at a beautiful porcelain vase in a shopwindow when a clumsy salesman knocks it over. “What a shame! Such a lovely vase!” you sigh, and continue calmly on your way. On the other hand, if you had just bought that vase and had placed it proudly on the mantle, only to see it fall and smash to smithereens, you would cry out in horror, “My vase is broken!” and be deeply affected by the accident. The sole difference is the label “my” that you had stuck to the vase.

We overvalue ourselves

This erroneous sense of a real and independent self is of course based on egocentricity, which persuades us that our own fate is of greater value than that of others.

In every instance, envy is the product of a wound to self-importance and the fruit of an illusion.

Using anger the right way

As Aristotle pointed out, anyone can get angry. That’s easy. But to get angry “on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner and at the right moment and for the right length of time”—that’s not easy.

Deliberate response to the world

As for anger, it can be neutralized by patience. This does not require us to remain passive, but to steer clear of being overwhelmed by destructive emotions. As the Dalai Lama explains: “Patience safeguards our peace of mind in the face of adversity. . . . It is a deliberate response (as opposed to an unreasoned reaction) to the strong negative thoughts and emotions that tend to arise when we encounter harm.”5

Emotional well being is a skill to be trained

Few of us would regret the years it takes to complete an education or master a crucial skill. So why complain about the perseverance needed to become a well-balanced and truly compassionate human being?

Vengeance doesn’t bring well being

Would such an attitude be tenable if a criminal broke into your house, raped your wife, killed your little boy, and kidnapped your sixteen-year-old daughter? As hateful and intolerable as such a situation may be, the inescapable question that arises is: What do I do now? In no instance is vengeance the most appropriate solution. Why not? Because in the long run it cannot bring us lasting well-being. It offers no consolation and fuels further violence.

There’s a difference between freedom and drifting

If a sailor looses the tiller and lets the sails flap in the wind and the boat drift wherever the currents take it, it is not called freedom—it is called drifting. Freedom here means taking the helm and sailing toward the chosen destination.

Don’t need to give up everything pleasurable to be happy; just need to be more deliberate about deciding what makes us happy

Renunciation, then, does not come down to saying no to all that is pleasant, to giving up strawberry ice cream or a nice hot shower after a long walk in the hills. It comes down to asking ourselves, with respect to certain aspects of our lives: “Is this going to make me happier?” Genuine happiness—as opposed to contrived euphoria—endures through life’s ups and downs.

Simplicity means more freedom and less distracting trivialities

“Our life is frittered away by detail. . . . Simplify, simplify,” wrote the American moralist Henry David Thoreau. Renunciation involves simplifying our acts, our speech, and our thoughts to rid ourselves of the superfluous. Simplifying our activities doesn’t mean sinking into laziness; on the contrary, it means acquiring a growing freedom and counteracting the most subtle aspect of inertia—the impulse that, even when we know what really counts in life, prompts us instead to pursue a thousand trivial activities, one after the other, like ripples in the water.

Happiness is proportional to wealth

Diogenes, in his famous barrel, told Alexander: “I am greater than you, my lord, because I have disdained more than you have ever possessed.” While the simplicity of a Bhutanese peasant may not have the same weight as the words of a great philosopher, it is still obvious that happiness and satisfaction are not proportional to wealth.

Need the ability to exert control over your life

According to K. Magnus and his colleagues, happiness goes hand in hand with the capacity to assert oneself with extroversion and empathy—happy people are generally open to the world.18 They believe that an individual can exert control over herself and her life, while unhappy people tend to believe themselves to be destiny’s playthings.

Instead of confronting them with resolve, they prefer to brood over their misfortunes, nurture illusions, dream up “magic” solutions, and accuse the whole world of being against them. They have a hard time drawing lessons from the past, which often leads to the repetition of their problems. They are more fatalistic (“I told you it wouldn’t work. It’s always the same, no matter what I do”) and are quick to see themselves as “mere pawns in the game of life.”

Always have hope; use current situation as a starting point

For an optimist, it makes no sense to lose hope. We can always do better (instead of being devastated, resigned, or disgusted), limit the damage (instead of letting it all go to pot), find an alternative solution (instead of wallowing pitifully in failure), rebuild what has been destroyed (instead of saying, “It’s all over!”), take the current situation as a starting point (instead of wasting our time crying over the past and lamenting the present),

Adaptability is way to overcome adversity

ADAPTABILITY When difficulties seem insurmountable, optimists react in a more constructive and creative way. They accept the facts with realism, know how to rapidly identify the positive in adversity, draw lessons from it, and come up with an alternative solution or turn to a new project. Pessimists would rather turn away from the problem or adopt escapist strategies—sleep, isolation, drug or alcohol abuse—that diminish their focus on the problem.