I am happy.

Man, it feels good to write those three words with no mixed feelings!

It wasn’t always like this. Sure, I was happy enough as long as life played by my rules. But life rarely respects anyone’s rules for long. And whenever it broke away from my perfect little plan, my happiness went with it.

It took ten years of active personal development before my external environment and internalized habits finally aligned to reveal authentic happiness. And it was (and still is) breathtakingly beautiful.

Here are the five steps that got me there.

1. Pursue Happiness Directly

“I’ll be happy once I [fill in the blank].”

A clean divorce from this toxic Western concept of conditional happiness is the first step to a truly fulfilling life.

If humanity has proven one thing, it’s that no amount of consumption or achievement will ever bring you authentic happiness. Thanks to the hedonic treadmill, your mind will simply move the goalposts, maintaining that nagging sense of dissatisfaction with life. Also, living large brings much more stress and complexity than we expect (or care to admit).

Instead, we should spend more time and energy on things that connect directly to happiness. Things like those listed in the next four steps.

For all the strivers out there, take it from this former overachiever: Happiness leads to success much more readily than success leads to happiness. A happy mind is more creative, easier to collaborate with, and keener to get stuff done. It took me a decade of way too much stress to figure this out.

Do more things that make you happy. Our culturally ingrained dogma of suffering our way to happiness was never going to work.

2. Choose Freedom and Meaning

“That sounds nice and all, but happiness doesn’t pay the bills.”

Yes, we’re conditioned from an early age to strive for high-paying jobs so we can buy all the stuff that’s supposed to make us happy. And it’s true: The privilege of working at your own pace on meaningful tasks you naturally excel at typically earns considerably less (at least initially).

Herein lies the first big test of whether you take your happiness seriously: Are you willing to trade money and stuff for freedom and meaning?

It’s a philosophical choice: the red pill or the blue pill.

• The blue pill is the accepted social narrative: a well-paying job where high stress and limited freedom are accepted as normal. Suffer to earn money. Use that money to make the suffering worthwhile.
• The red pill is the emerging alternative: a commitment to finding happiness in work, so excess spending becomes unnecessary.

The blue pill offers security and social acceptance, both of which we value very highly. The red pill, on the other hand, involves risk and uncertainty.

Luckily, the real-life choice between the red and blue pills is not as absolute and irrevocable as in The Matrix. Instead, we can gradually transition from a blue-pill life to a red-pill life.

That’s exactly what I’ve been doing. Today, I’m working 40% in my blue-pill job and spending the rest of my time and energy building my red-pill life. Not only is the red-pill life deeply fulfilling, but the 40% of my blue-pill job I chose to keep is good fun too. Overall, it’s pretty awesome!

3. Happily Interpret Your Experiences

The analogy continues beyond red and blue pills. In fact, we live our entire lives in a weird kind of Matrix where none of our experiences are real.

Unless your circumstances are genuinely awful, objective reality has surprisingly little to say about your happiness. In fact, our physical circumstances explain only about 10% of the variation in human happiness. It’s crazy if you think about it: wealth, marriage, kids, education, career, and everything else we strive so hard for sum to a measly 10%.

What matters much more is our interpretation of reality.

This is good news because we can train our brains to see our reality in a more positive light, whether it’s past, present, or future:

• Whenever your mind drifts back in time, look for something to be grateful for. And yes, the character and wisdom you gained from all those painful experiences deserve plenty of gratitude.
• Learn to savor the present moment. We’ll return to this in Step 5.
• Earn the right to be hopeful about the future. How? Build a set of habits you can confidently extrapolate into a better tomorrow. What would your life look like if you were your best self for the next decade?

I can also add that the freedom and meaning from Step 2 seem to augment this step. Skillfully interpreting your reality requires mental space and a sense of calm — both of which are hard to find in a hectic blue-pill life.

4. Master Your Primitive Emotions

We’re a bunch of cavemen (and cavewomen) stuck in the future.

Our high-tech reality is so alien to the primitive instincts that evolved over our 200-millennia history that we might as well be living on Mars.

Most of our ongoing lifestyle disease epidemic can be attributed to this mismatch. The problem is simple: Our outdated instincts drive us to act in myriad ways that slowly degrade our bodies, minds, and spirits.

Taming my primitive emotions is one of my proudest life achievements. It sounds silly, but my superpower is the ability to never self-destruct, even when life deals me an unexpected low-blow. No junk food, no junk media, no sabotaging my relationships.

Each of the other steps in this article will contribute to such an emotional upgrade. In my case, Step 2 was particularly important. A more direct route is the emotion canvas, a concept inspired by The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris. It looks like this:

This simple canvas can help you understand the triggers that send you into an emotional tailspin. Take some time to populate it, sync it between your devices, and consult it whenever your emotions flare up. It offers a powerful emotional upgrade (more details available here).

5. Discover Healthy Pleasure

Today, most pleasure involves a straight trade of your time, money, and health for a carefully engineered, highly addictive dopamine hit.

Luckily, there are plenty of healthier alternatives to this terrible trade. My top seven read as follows:

1. Rest. If you’re a striver like I was for most of my adult life, the skill of deeply restorative (screen-free) rest is a life-changer.
2. Active rest. Light exercise offers a lovely mental recharge and even dishes up the occasional flash of inspiration. As a welcome bonus, this revitalizing habit will keep you fit for life.
3. Wholesome sensory experiences. Be mindful of the taste and texture of whole food, the aroma of a fresh rainfall, the sensations of a perfectly warm shower, the vision of a sunset, the soothing sounds of nature…
4. Creative expression. Forget the artificial perfection of all those filtered and autotuned consumer creatives. Embrace your creativity for your own pleasure. What the world thinks of it matters not.
5. Make someone happy. There are few better feelings than invoking a genuine smile or a heartfelt “thank you.” It would be a happier world if we could help each other smile more often.
6. Inspiring work. In line with Step 2, meaningful work you do out of your own free will is a wonderful indulgence. You might even be treated to the occasional flow experience.
7. Realistic dreaming. Can you extrapolate your current habits into a beautiful future? If so, realistic dreaming is a richly deserved pleasure.

It’s pointless to waste your willpower on resisting the highly addictive, self-sabotaging temptations offered by the Instant Pleasure Industry. Instead, gradually displace them with these healthy alternatives.

You’ll never look back.

Thanks for reading! May authentic happiness carry you through life’s ups and downs with a grateful, mindful, and hopeful heart.