<story><title>The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/06/happiness-index-wellbeing-survey-uk-population-paul-dolan-happy-ever-after</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vorpalhex</author><text>There is nothing which will make you happy. You must choose to be happy.&lt;p&gt;There is no job, no amount of money, no relationship, which will make you feel whole and happy and content and done. The opposite doesn&amp;#x27;t hold - there are jobs and relationships and financial strains which will certainly keep you from being happy.&lt;p&gt;The goal isn&amp;#x27;t for a job or a relationship to make you happy. It&amp;#x27;s to enable other things which are your goals, which may or may not be happiness related.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>snarf21</author><text>This reminds me of a quote from Stewart Brand during an interview with Tim Ferris.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;.... and being proud is the most reliable source of happiness that I know.&amp;quot;[&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;tim.blog&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;the-tim-ferriss-show-transcripts-stewart-brand&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;tim.blog&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;the-tim-ferriss-show-transcripts...&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;p&gt;Teach yourself how to cook, get in shape, draw a picture, write a story, help someone less fortunate, teach someone something you know, learn how to juggle... In the end it doesn&amp;#x27;t really matter what it is but you will have that proud feeling and be happy in that moment. Rinse and repeat.</text></comment>
<story><title>The money, job, marriage myth: are you happy yet?</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/06/happiness-index-wellbeing-survey-uk-population-paul-dolan-happy-ever-after</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>vorpalhex</author><text>There is nothing which will make you happy. You must choose to be happy.&lt;p&gt;There is no job, no amount of money, no relationship, which will make you feel whole and happy and content and done. The opposite doesn&amp;#x27;t hold - there are jobs and relationships and financial strains which will certainly keep you from being happy.&lt;p&gt;The goal isn&amp;#x27;t for a job or a relationship to make you happy. It&amp;#x27;s to enable other things which are your goals, which may or may not be happiness related.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>PakG1</author><text>Very true, but once you make the decision, all those other things are multipliers.  Just unfortunately, if you make the negative decision, well the negative still multiplies too.... hence the divorces and all the drama at work....&lt;p&gt;If you took away my marriage and job, I would be markedly more unhappy.  I imagine if I ever have a big wad of cash sitting around, I would be a bit less happy if that disappeared too (only because keeping it around certainly would only keep me at the status quo, if not make me more happy).&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s that they say about coming into a lot of money, that it just reveals who your true self is?&lt;p&gt;And yes, some people get into crappy marriages or crappy jobs where they just get knocked down 24&amp;#x2F;7.  But I&amp;#x27;ve observed that negative people easily self-prophesy into negative situations far more often than positive people.&lt;p&gt;edit:  added points</text></comment>