Unfortunately, many of us are afraid to question. We crave security, and challenging our beliefs threatens this security. In same cases, our religion may discourage such challenges (see Can we be open-minded in organized religion?). However, unless we do question, we will never find the security we seek, because if we are not fully prepared to question then we can never fully believe. If we refuse to question something then it is not a belief but a hope - it is something that we are afraid to investigate lest it turns out to be false. When we flee from reality in this way, we are no different from an ostrich burying its head in the sand…wanting to escape from a predator that may or may not be there.

The adage says that ignorance is bliss. However, ignorance is not bliss, and unquestioning faith is not a virtue. We must lift our heads out of the sand and discover for ourselves what is true. Spiritual inquiry will not threaten this truth, because the truth will withstand any test. Spiritual inquiry is only an attack on that which is false. If we claim that we already know the truth, we are fools. Our beliefs will always have error, and inquiry must never stop. Answers will not come from a book or doctrine, at least not without the additional requisite of questioning. Even if we were to have complete faith in another’s words, our understanding would always be imperfect. We need questioning as the litmus to separate true from false. If we seek the Truth, we must question forever.

If we are married, we probably do not see our spouse during the day. We say goodbye in the morning when we leave for work, we then do our daily work alone, eat lunch alone, and only reunite at the end of the day. Even then, we probably do not spend all our time together. Perhaps one of us watches TV while the other talks on the phone or prepares a meal. Yet despite all this time apart from our spouse, there is no sense of loneliness. Although we do our daily work separately, we know that the other is only a few miles away, that we will see them at the end of the day, that with a simple phone call we can hear their voice. This knowledge makes us content.

Now consider when our spouse needs to travel for a period, perhaps for a month or more. This could cause terrible loneliness. Suddenly, we eat our lunch and feel lonely. We do our daily work and feel lonely. We come home and watch TV and feel lonely. Even in those times when we would not have been with our spouse anyway, we still feel lonely, because there is this idea in our heads that our spouse is a long way away. Although our daily activities are largely unchanged, they are now imbued with sadness.

Thus, we can see that this notion of loneliness is just an idea in our head. We take an ordinary activity such as driving to work, and we attach this idea of “I’m lonely” to it. We may be lonely because our spouse is away, or it may be because we are single, divorced, widowed, or friendless. We may also be attaching ideas other than loneliness. Perhaps we spend our days thinking that we are broke, sick, unpopular, or old. These ideas seldom have any relevance to the present moment and the task at hand. They are just ideas that go around in our heads and serve only to make us miserable.

Therefore, to fight loneliness, or any other condition, we must learn to reside in the present moment. We must keep our attention with whatever we are doing, and not devote energy to these foolish ideas of being lonely, broke, sick, or anything else. This is not to say that we must ignore such problems. If we are lonely, we can make an effort to meet people. If we are broke, we can look for a new job. However, we must ensure that we only deal with such problems at the appropriate time and place. We must not let them consume our minds at every moment of the day - while eating breakfast, while watching a movie, or when looking after our kids. If we feed ideas with attention in this way, they will expand in our heads and take on more significance, and this will only make our problems worse.

Understanding assists love by helping us recognize ourselves in others, and helping us see that for all our superficial differences, we are of the same essence. Without understanding, it is all too easy to be judgemental. We see someone acting selfishly, and a barrage of anger and criticism arises within us. Understanding helps us see past their behaviour and to recognize that this seemingly selfish person seeks love and happiness, just the same as we do. Rather than judging that person as “bad”, we view their selfishness as ignorance, and we feel compassion for them. Understanding makes us more accepting, less judgemental, and thereby removes some of the impediments to love.

Love, on the other hand, is the quality that makes us try to understand another person in the first place. It is what makes us willing to reach out and touch them, to put ourselves in their shoes. Love is what stops us from rejecting or ignoring those whom we may otherwise recoil from. Whereas understanding is helpful for love, love is absolutely essential for true understanding. It is the faith in humanity that causes us, when we see someone acting nastily and we do not know why, to have compassion for them anyway. Only with this compassion can we even begin to think about why they act the way they do. Only with this compassion can we come to understand them and to love them completely.

Therefore, when we come to love and understand a person or thing, the first impulse is from the heart. The love comes before the understanding. However, from this point on, they each boost each other. Without understanding, there is a danger that the love will go away. Understanding is what maintains the love and helps it expand to encompass all. Yet without love, the understanding is empty. Love is not merely understanding a person, but feeling compassion for them, wanting to help them, and holding them in our hearts.

Although our lives are defined by the search for the “good” and the avoidance of the “bad”, there is really nothing in life that is inherently good or bad. Such notions are relative - the “good” cannot exist unless we can contrast it with the “bad”. It is easy to conceive of lives much easier than our own, just as it is easy to conceive of lives much harder. Thus, there is no way to say whether our lives are easy or hard. What is more important is how we relate to our so-called hardships.

When we go to the gym to lift weights, we likely experience a lot of pain. However, this pain does not bother us because we know that the harder we push ourselves, the stronger we become. We see the pain is a good thing, taking pleasure in our ability to push ourselves further and experience greater hardships. Similarly, if we were to climb a high mountain, we would enjoy the struggle involved - it would give us a feeling of accomplishment and pride. It becomes a challenge.

What is it that makes such striving a source of enjoyment and accomplishment? The key difference is that sense that we have taken it on voluntarily. If a student sets herself a goal, such as taking 10 courses in a semester, she enjoys the challenge and relishes the difficulties. On the other hand, if she were forced to take this many courses, she has a different attitude. She may complain and feel that she were being treated unfairly. To enjoy life’s hardships, we must stop resisting them and stop seeing them as unfair. We must embrace the situation, and take pleasure in the difficulties.

It is not enough to merely climb the hills - we must come to love the hills. When we take on challenges with this attitude, whatever the situation may be, the difficulties no longer bother us. It does not make the pain go away, and life does not become suddenly easy. However, by fostering that sense of challenge and adventure, we give up that limiting belief that life is supposed to be easy. Instead of pining for something easier, we learn to enjoy the parts that are hard.

Featured in The Seventeenth Edition of the Carnival of Improving Life.

There are two main factors that stop us from enjoying ourselves. The first is an active dislike of our current situation. This means that we find whatever we are doing to be distasteful, be it our regular day job, washing the dishes, or talking to an irritating colleague. If a high proportion of our days are spent doing activities that we actively dislike, then we have a problem. The solution may be to change jobs or trade responsibilities to make our days more enjoyable. In some cases, all that is needed is a simple change in attitude. For example, we may think that doing the dishes is a horrible task, but when we further reflect on it we realize that soaking our hands in warm water and gently scrubbing can actually be quite relaxing. Similarly, a boring job can be made more stimulating if we come up with creative challenges for ourselves to break the monotony.

The second factor that stops us from enjoying ourselves is when we pay very little attention to our current situation and instead become preoccupied in thought. For example, instead of enjoying a pleasant walk through the park on the way to work, we may be busy deciding what to cook for dinner, or how to spend the weekend, or whether to buy a new car. Instead of enjoying the present, we are plotting ways to enjoy the future. Clearly, this cycle is never-ending.

Hence, there are several things we can do to make our lives more enjoyable. First, we can stay with the present moment and thus enjoy that walk through the park, the coffee in the waiting room, or the gentle breeze on our face. Second, instead of actively disliking certain situations, we can learn to accept them and make the most of them. We can change our attitudes and realize that many inherently “bad” situations or tasks are actually quite relaxing. Third, we can look at our daily activities and discover what we do and don’t enjoy. Then, as much as possible, we can restructure and change our days to create a more satisfying life.

Why does this discontentment exist? How can we remove it? If we examine our mind when it is discontented, we find that it is filled with thoughts of what we lack and what we need. Although such thoughts might be justified if we are worried about starvation or shelter for the winter, they are hardly justified for most of our daily concerns. More likely, we are discontented because our car is 5 years old, our clothes are longer fashionable, or we have no date for Saturday night. If we attach so much importance to these minor details, it is no wonder that we are not content.

To find peace and contentment, we must learn to cultivate gratitude and to appreciate what we have. Instead of thinking about what we lack, we must learn to focus on the positives in life. Of particular importance, we must stop comparing ourselves to others and becoming jealous of what we perceive them to have. Why does it matter what our neighbour has? What about all those people less fortunate than ourselves? Our thoughts dictate our feelings. If our thoughts are about what we lack, discontentment follows. The practice of gratitude is a powerful tool to keep us focused on what is right with our lives.

Therefore, whenever we feel discontent, we must try to regain our perspective. We must remember what is truly important in life. Discontentment results from our tendency to blow something out of proportion - to think that a new car, a better house, or even a small salary raise will make all the difference in our lives. If we are dissatisfied with our lot, we may be tempted to try and improve it. However, no improvement in our circumstances will make us any better off unless we also learn to appreciate what we already have.

The evidence for hedonic adaptation is well established. Lottery winners report an initial high followed by an eventual return to their former levels of happiness. Similarly, recent paralysis victims report the same happiness levels as before their misfortune, aside from an initial low. This is also true for less dramatic changes in our life: marriage, income, and the region in which we live, all have very little impact on our long-term happiness. So, if none of these things will help our happiness, is there anything that can help us be happier?

The key to sustainable happiness is to change our activities rather than our circumstances. A change in circumstances, such as a new car, relationship, or promotion, can quickly be taken for granted. It becomes a background fact that does little to alter our happiness. On the other hand, changes in our activities or behaviour do have the potential to permanently increase our happiness. Examples of activity/behavioural changes include beginning to exercise daily, practising smiling at people, learning to meditate, or starting each day by writing a list of things to be thankful for. Hedonic adaptation applies only to changes in circumstance, and not to changes in activity.

Therefore, when we seek to increase our happiness, we should look to change our activities and not our circumstances. Of course, sometimes a change in circumstance may lead to a change in our activities. For example, if our new car just means driving to work instead of going by bus, then we will quickly adapt. On the other hand, if our new car means that we can now drive to the mountains and take up hiking, and if we do this regularly, then substantial increases in our happiness could result. Similarly, a relationship for which we are consistently thankful and into which we pour all our energy and love is likely to yield great benefits. However, if we begin to take our relationship for granted, we will be back to where we started.

Permanent increases in happiness are possible, but they require a sustained and intelligent application of effort. We must develop useful habits and ways of thinking, a good one being the practise of gratitude (see Gratitude: Focus on what is right with life). The traditional goals of more money, a nicer house, and a faster car, will not help us. We must change our activities, our behaviours, our thinking…not merely our circumstances.

Research by Timothy Wilson and colleagues asked university couples how well-adjusted they considered their relationships. Some couples were allowed to answer based on gut-feel, whereas others were asked to first analyse their relationship out load and verbally explain the reasons for their answers. The experiment found that the couples who answered based on gut-feel were significantly more accurate at assessing their relationships than those who first explained their reasons, as measured by whether they were still together several months later. This demonstrates that our intuition can outperform our ability to verbally reason. See Less thinking leads to better decisions for more examples.

What is the problem with verbal reasoning? The problem is that not all thoughts can be expressed in words. If we reason about something verbally, we tend to skim over those thoughts that we cannot easily express. Thus, if asked to explain why we like someone, we focus on concrete traits that we can describe, whereas most of what we value in a relationship really falls under the category of intangible and inexpressible qualities. This may explain why couples are much better at evaluating their relationships when they answer solely based on intuition.

Thus, whether justifying our actions to ourselves or to another, referring to intuition or gut-feel is a perfectly valid explanation. Concrete and tangible reasons may be attractive - they can be easily shared with others, they can be written down in a table of pros and cons - but at the end of the day they can only capture a small component of what is important. The power of intuition to grasp all of this and more, and to sum this up as a feeling, is foolish to ignore…particularly in matters of love.

There are definitely problems with thinking too much. Almost every spiritual tradition speaks against this. Peace and happiness can only exist in the present moment, and thought takes us away from this place. We all recognize the negatives of being burdened with thought. Many of us set goals to “live in the moment”, and resolve to relax and be at peace. Ironically, although our ultimate goal is to be free of thought, we spend much time thinking about how to do this.

The natural way out seems to be to stop thinking altogether. We still think thoughts such as how to get our next meal, but we leave the deeper questions of life aside. However, this notion of giving up thought altogether is not only unrealistic, but it is also a cop-out. A cow has very few deep thoughts, but it is only a cow after all. Should we not strive to rise above this?

The answer lies not in giving up thought, but in changing the way we relate to thought. It is true, as the studies showed, that introspection may lead to unhappiness, but this is simply because we need training in the way that we reflect. We must think but without brooding, and we must recognize that our thoughts are not reality. There is a difference between being prepared for an earthquake or hurricane, and lying awake at night for fear that one will strike. Similarly, there is a difference between exploring ways to be happy and peaceful, and  constantly focusing on the idea that we have not yet achieved this happiness or peace. Thoughts are essentially a brainstorm: they represent all possibilities of which we can conceive; however, they do not arrive with some guarantee of authority. The thought that an earthquake might strike does not mean that this is a likely occurrence. A twinge of sadness does not mean that our life is ruined. We must relate to our thoughts as though we were searching the Internet - there is a lot of information there, but it is up to us to discriminate between what is false and what is true. It is up to us to decide where our attention should lie.

Therefore, returning to the initial question of happiness and introspection, the problem arises when our thinking focuses too much on what is wrong. This leads us to believe that we are unhappy - our thoughts become our reality. We must stop taking ourselves so seriously, we must stop taking our thoughts so seriously. If we do this, we can have the best of both worlds - we can think, but without being burdened by these thoughts. Our mind is no longer our master, but instead our greatest friend.

The paradox arises because selfishness is the wrong issue to focus on. The quality that distinguishes happy and altruistic people from their unhappy and self-centred counterparts is not one of selfishness, but one of awareness. Awareness is the understanding that helping others is actually beneficial both for them and for us. If people realized this truth, then they would never be selfish, for it would be senseless. Thus, selfish people are those who are unaware.

It may seem lenient to describe selfish people as simply “unaware”. We might prefer to vilify them as evil and immoral. However, describing them as “unaware” is not lenient, it’s just the plain truth. Noone knowingly acts in a way that causes harm both to others and to themselves, and so when we see someone doing this, we can assume that they lack understanding. This does not mean that murderers should be allowed to roam free. However, we should not lock them away to punish them for evil, but rather to help them understand the effects of their actions (and also to protect the rest of society).

A nice analogy is to compare humanity to a human body, with each person being an individual cell. Cells in our body want to survive. The best way for them to survive is for them to work together so that the body as a whole survives. Cancerous cells, on the other hand, multiply uncontrollably. This benefits them in the short-term, but the end result is that the body dies, and thus all cells - the cancerous ones included - die. So are the cancerous cells selfish? Probably. But their real problem is not selfishness but a lack of awareness. They fail to understand that their multiplication will destroy the whole body, including themselves. If they developed awareness, everyone would benefit.

Hence, instead of passing moral judgements on selfishness and unselfishness, we should focus on awareness and a lack of awareness. Because it is through developing awareness that we come to understand the true importance of love and compassion. When we have this understanding, questions of selfishness and unselfishness are no longer relevant.