How to Maximize Your Happiness

A thought:

If your goal is to maximize your happiness and joy in life, you must embrace the extremes (in the dark ends).

Let me explain:

If I were never depressed, how could I know what happiness is?

I am very grateful for the moments of depression in my life. Why? Without ever experiencing depression, how could I understand joy?

Why eliminate pain and suffering?

What is ‘happiness’? It seems one of the practical notions in Chinese (幸) is:

Opposite of death.

To be “happy” (or fortunate) is simply to be alive.

Perhaps we should simply be grateful to be alive — first step of happiness.

The highest highs, the lowest lows.

An idea from Nietzsche (Joyful Wisdom) is this:

By lowering our susceptibility to pain (Stoicism), we also lower our susceptibility for the upper-bounds of happiness.

Therefore in some ways, I wonder:

If you desire to reach a new apex of happiness in life, you must allow yourself to go into the deepest and darkest depression.

You feel a higher upside with a lower downside

Why am I so happy and optimistic? Because of my dark past.

Portrait by Josh White

Because I have experienced so much pain and suffering as a young child (and have survived), I have experienced “post traumatic growth”.

Another example:

You can never truly appreciate your body without a crippling injury or infection.

For example when I first had to use crutches in college after a severe ankle injury, I truly appreciated my legs and the ability to walk by a factor of 1000x.

Why do you desire to maximize your joy or happiness?

For myself, I’m interested in maximizing my personal joy and happiness because I feel it is a new road or a new plane of existence. I’m fascinated:

What are certain states of human consciousness we have yet experienced?

This is why I love powerlifting so much — to me, powerlifting is applied zen meditation, except 100x more badass.

With powerlifting, the moment I attempt a new PR and push through — I enter a new level of human existence. My brain goes blank. All that is in action is my body, muscles, and gravity.