By Derek Thompson — 2011
Buy more experiences and fewer objects. Don't worry about insurance. The frequency of happy events matters more than their intensity.
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CLEAR ALL
Question: Buddhist teachers, including the Dalai Lama, often speak of happiness as a goal (if not the goal) of Buddhist practice. I don’t begrudge anyone happiness, but making it so central to spiritual life feels self-serving. Am I misunderstanding what’s meant by “happiness”?
It’s surprisingly easy to achieve lasting happiness — we just have to understand our own basic nature. The hard part, says Mingyur Rinpoche, is getting over our bad habit of seeking happiness in transient experiences.
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Sneezing, coughing, blowing her nose—Natalie Goldberg was awfully sick yet she was happy. Happiness is available to everyone, she realized, but we can find it only when we’re still.
If you want to know how to use the money you have to become happier, you need to understand just what it is that brings you happiness in the first place.
Many equate self-discipline with living a good, moral life, which ends up creating a lot of shame when we fail. There’s a better way to build lasting, solid self-discipline in your life.
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