What Started Me Thinking

  • "Whoever is happy will make others happy, too." Mark Twain.
  • “There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.” Robert Louis Stevenson
  • "Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." Luke 10:41-42
  • “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” Simone Weil
  • “What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner.” Colette
  • “It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.” G. K. Chesterton
  • “A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.” Joseph Addison
  • “Best is good. Better is best.” Lisa Grunwald
  • “Order is Heaven’s first law.” Alexander Pope

Happiness Theories I Reject

  • Flaubert: "To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless."
  • Vauvenargues: “There are men who are happy without knowing it.”
  • Eric Hoffer: “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.”
  • Sartre: "Hell is other people."
  • Willa Cather: “One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them…”
  • Alexander Smith: “We are never happy; we can only remember that we were so once.”
  • John Stuart Mill: “Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.”

Tips on how to be happy—from the year 1625.

FrancisbaconEvery Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday…Tips on how to be happy—from the year 1625.

Below are selected suggestions put forth by British philosopher, essayist, and statesman Francis Bacon in his essay, “Of Regiment of Health”:

It is a safer conclusion to say, This agreeth not well with me, therefore I will not continue it, than this, I find no offence of this, therefore I may use it.

Discern of the coming on of years, and think not to do the same things still.

Beware of sudden change in any great point of diet, and if necessity enforce it, fit the rest to it. For it is a secret, both in nature and state, that it is safer to change many things than one. [I found this observation particularly intriguing.]

Examine thy customs of diet, sleep, exercise, apparel and the like, and try in anything thou shalt judge hurtful, to discontinue it little by little; but so as if thou dost find any inconvenience by the change, thou come back to it again: for it is hard to distinguish that which is generally held good and wholesome from that which is good particularly and fit for thine own body.

To be free-minded and cheerfully disposed at hours of meat and of sleep and of exercise, is one of the best precepts of long lasting.

Avoid envy, anxious fears, anger fretting inwards, subtle and knotty inquisitions, joys and exhilarations in excess, sadness not communicated.

Entertain hopes, mirth rather than joy, variety of delights rather than surfeit of them, wonder and admiration (and therefore novelties), studies that fill the mind with splendid and illustrious objects (as histories, fables, and contemplations of nature).

Despise no new accident [unexpected change] in your body, but ask opinion of it.

In sickness, respect health principally; and in health, action.

Comments

Oh, these are great! I'm afraid I've got the 'anger fretting inward' covered, but I'm working on the 'variety of delights' to balance it out.

I really enjoy reading your entries- they are always both clever and to the point!

Thanks so much for your kind words -- you've made me very happy.

"studies that fill the mind with splendid and illustrious objects"

Splendid and illustrious objects! Ah, bliss.

"live in day tight compartments"....:)

"Discern of the coming on of years, and think not to do the same things still"
this really is enough to change a life and i'm really grateful for it's timeliness.yet i think i need some more explanation on "Beware of sudden change in any great point of diet, and if necessity enforce it, fit the rest to it. For it is a secret, both in nature and state, that it is safer to change many things than one. [I found this observation particularly intriguing.]"

Funny how the preoccupation of experiencing happiness is timeless. This helps people to realize that it is their perception and understanding of a concept that changes, not the concept itself. That is forever static.

It is amazing how appliclable this same advice could be today. Some things remain true throughout the ages.

Karen

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Gretchen RubinGretchen Rubin is a best-selling writer whose new book, The Happiness Project, is an account of the year she spent test-driving studies and theories about how to be happier. On this blog, she shares her insights to help you create your own happiness project.


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