MASTERING HAPPINESS IN DIFFICULT TIMES
One definition of happiness is an emotion; an internal experience based on good feelings, happy times, getting what we want. This is a fine quality to enjoy, of course, when things are going well, and one’s personal planets are aligned.
But what happens when things don’t go well, when life gets hard, when we don’t get what we want, and the work we do seems like nothing but a hard slog?
Well, in that case, the emotional definition of happiness doesn’t do us much good.
Fortunately, the emotion of happiness in the moment is only one facet of our experience of happiness. Simply put, we can feel happy about our life; happy and proud of how we deal with the vicissitudes of life, and earn a sense of genuine well being, regardless of our circumstances.
This is a much more interesting view of happiness, one which Aristotle wrote about some 2,500 years ago in his Nicomachean Ethics. This is the quality of happiness that he called “Eudaemonia,” which TTP’s resident Aristotelian Jack Wheeler translates to “success at being human.”
What are the skills we can practice to achieve that?













