I don’t think most people reach a specific day when they can say, I Am Happy. It’s always complicated, life is always bittersweet. But you can get happier.

The Problem

As far as I can tell people have two issues with achieving happiness.

Some have the problem I have/had: The inability to forgo short term pleasure for long term success. It’s evidence is you spending your time on things you don’t really care about (playing video games, browsing the internet, etc.), while things you do care about (becoming a better person, finding love, etc.) languish.

Other people make a bad decision about what that long term success should look like. The decide to go to medical school or something to please others and end up in a situation they don’t really want.

There’s also a lot of past abuse and trauma which can make it very hard for some people to do the things they need to to be happy. The best I can do for that is suggest therapy.

Another way of explaining that dichotomy is:

If you know what is missing from your life, who you want to be and what you want to have, but don’t, you probably have my problem.

If you really have no idea what you need to be happy (or at least happier) you have the other.

Doing What Matters

Forging yourself into someone who can do the things which will deliver long-term happiness, not just short-term pleasure, is one of the great challenges of life. It’s a continual battle, but not in the way people think. It’s not usually a battle of willpower, forcing yourself to do things you don’t want to. It is actually more accurately forcing yourself to do things you very much want to do.

In other words, it’s a fight to subvert the silly bits of our brain which push us to do things we have very little real interest in doing, in favor of the things we want to be doing. It’s doing the things you would be excited to tell your friends you accomplished, not the things you are a bit ashamed of doing.

If you actually, genuinely, with no reservations want to eat that pizza or play that video game, do it! Life is made up of great experiences, and it sounds like that would be one.

But eating the third frozen pizza this week doesn’t sound like something which is actually going to give you happiness. It’s not a novel experience and it’s not a particularly interesting one. What it will give you is the fleeting pleasure of cheese and grease. That dopamine may quiet some of the pain we all feel from time to time, but it won’t build in you the continuous feed of dopamine that happiness can give.

If it’s what you’re used to eating, it is a familiar choice. Choosing something familiar is always intrinsically easier than branching out and figuring out how to do things differently.

But, if you’re overweight and don’t like it, the only path to happiness in that realm of your life is change. You must learn how to eat differently, and how to live without the daily pleasure of unhealthy food, if you are to be happy.

On some level, you probably know it as you put the pizza in the oven. You certainly viscerally want to eat it, but you probably don’t want to be the type of person who over indulges in food like that. That disparity is the difference between your short term and long term decision making.

The ultimate goal of all of this is to gradually shift your life over to having more and more time guided by long term goals.

Why

Picture the life you want to have. Maybe you want a caring wife and a beautiful family. Maybe you want a respect-worthy job which pushes you. Maybe you want a terraced villa in Southern Italy with a small vegetable patch in the back.

What does a person who has those things look like?

Someone with a caring wife probably is emotionally honest, and comfortable talking on a human level to the people they encounter in life. They probably have an interesting hobby or two, and take care of their body. They probably treat the people around them with respect, and are gracious if they don’t get it in return.

A person with a respect-worthy job, probably earned that respect. They probably spent years working in jobs which would push their abilities in specific ways to give them the skills they needed. They probably took opportunities to work on their writing, their public speaking, their managerial skills. They also probably failed a good number of times, but kept trying new things.

A person with a villa in Italy probably made choices in their life to end up there. They probably decided that the ‘prestige’ of the traditional suburban life is not really for them. It sounds like they had the courage to do something other people might not understand, perhaps to defy some expectations set for them, and do what they needed to do to be happy.

If you want to be James Bond, you don’t get it by wishing. You get it by going to the gym, learning six languages, and reading books on suit tailoring. Whatever you want in this life, it very much helps to have the lifestyle that earns it.

Additionally, I think we all feel a certain amount of guilt around the gap between the lives we want and the lives we make happen. And reducing that guilt helps achieve happiness.

How

The simplest answer is, start with something. Maybe it’s losing weight, or learning an instrument, or taking martial arts classes. Making even one change like this can be tremendously diffucult, so I would avoid trying too much. In fact, after you are successful in this first step, each successive one gets much easier. Eventually you will reach a point when it’s not a struggle, when what you want to do now aligns with what you want yourself to be doing, but it will take some effort to get there.

I have a few tips for this first activity. For one, focus on what you like about it, not what it’s depriving you of. For healthy eating, for example, it’s much nicer to decide you actually like steak salads (watch the dressing!), than it is to think of all the things you cannot have.

Virtually every true passion in life requires some effort to find it’s value. When playing an instrument you have to suffer through hours of frustration before you find the joy in it. With a martial art you have to brave your awkwardness and embarrassment before you get the confidence and fun. With dieting you have to struggle with all the things you love which you have to avoid for a time, before you realize how great a fennel salad can be.

The key is to stick with it for long enough to make it to the other side. You know what type of person you need to be, there isn’t much choice but to take one step at a time towards it. It will probably take years, or in a sense, your whole life, to reach the final mecca, but I believe the journey of self-improvement is the highest calling for all of us.

Having a Positive Impact

While we’re talking about being the type of person who would have the things you want, I have one other observation: I don’t know any happy assholes.

Every happy person I know at least makes an effort to be nice to the people around them. You might say that it’s effect, not cause, that being happy makes you nice. In my experience though, being kind is a choice. You decide that you want to have a positive impact on the people you interact with. From that decision, you work on those parts of your personality which belittle, inconvenience or annoy the people around you.

We are social animals, and the impact you have on others effects both them and you. If you are causing them to not feel great, they might avoid you, leaving you alone. And, you will know exactly why you’re alone, and guilt is not a recipe for happiness.

Happiness as the Avoidance of Pain

Everyone has factors in their lives they don’t like. You are in college and wish you were done. You are a waiter and wish you were in college. You are unemployed and wish you were a waiter. It’s important to realize though that avoidance of pain is not the same as the achievement of pleasure

You need to both have positive things in your life, and to not have negative. Being in college was negative. When it’s done done, great. But that is not enough to leave you happy.

It’s like you were a rat in a cage getting shocked. While that’s going on, all you want is for it to stop. But after its stopped for a while, you realize that there is more to life than not being shocked.

Wrap Up

In a sense then, happiness, as described here, is getting all the ducks in a row required to make you the type of person who would have the things you want in life. Once that’s done, my experience is, you will get them.

Happiness is always a thing which varies and waivers from day-to-day, but it is real. If you don’t believe me, think about the things in your life which make you feel guilty. The skills you wish you had. The interactions you have which could have been more positive. The things you don’t do out of fear or embarrassment. Now how would eliminating one, or two, or all of those things feel? How would it feel to wake up in the morning without them?

I work at Cloudflare in San Francisco where I help build the future of the Internet.  Follow me on Twitter