Small things. Sounds. The temperature of the air. The fact that my side isn't hurting right now. The kids costumes who were just trick or treating at my house.

Happiness is fleeting, like other emotions, it comes and goes. Focusing on it is like chasing a wave.

Understanding your own values and what you find meaningful is essential for moving through life, because we're not in control. Stuff happens, and we get to deal with it.

I found happiness. I am almost done with it. You want it after me?

You don’t find happiness. It comes and goes. Imagine being happy all the time; it would just become normal. You need non happy times to appreciate the happy times.

As someone that is either very happy or very sad, I find happiness in my hobbies. I need my mind to be occupied to pass the time, but then there is the thought I’m just waiting to die and passing time.

Hobbies that make me happy are:

• Indoor bouldering (rock climbing) is the only thing I’ve found that lets me escape the constant train of thought and be in the moment. It’s a nerdy hobby as lots of problem solving mixed with strength training.
• Running
• Rubiks cube
• Lego
• Cross stitch
• Paint by numbers
• 3D printing
• learning
• many more but this is getting long.

As someone who is down a lot of the time and has ADHD but stopped the meds as the side affects were worse than living with ADHD; I’ve found that routine is a massive thing required to be content with life. Consistent bed time and wake time. I am not a morning person but after 18 months of waking at 07:30 or 06:00, depending on if I’m taking the train to work, that I now wake up a few minutes before my alarm quite often; I’m still tired and I hate it but it gets easier.

Spending time with other people is key too. I find if I’m down it’s usually cause I’ve been alone a lot (which I love) and that can be bad for me so I’ll go see friends even if I don’t want to just to engage.

Luckily I can spot when I’m spiralling. I have an urge to fire up Minecraft and live vicariously through Steve and shut out the world.

Eating people. Eating family and friends, eating vagrants, eating the needy. Some people can even taste the camaraderie of the people they work with.

It comes down to eating people and if you have trouble just eat people. You know what they say hungry people eat people.

Gratitude and helping others

I find happiness getting lost in projects, projects being anything & everything from writing to designing to stuff around the house to whatever. Just something that gets me obsessed for at least a few days or weeks. I can’t predict when it will happen, it just has to be a sufficient problem for me to look at.

I also find happiness with some people, but that sort of happiness is unpredictable as well since people have their own lives going on and feelings can change over time. Getting too close to people though can just as easily make my life feel meaningless and make me depressed when things turn sour. I tend to crave affection and physical touch, so this is a hard one for me to just ignore this.

Hobbies, spending time wirh friends and families, eating, murdering vagrants, helping the needy, and some people even enjoy comraderie with people they work with.

It comes down to figuring out what makes you happy and if you have trouble you just need to try new things.

by not trying to compare themselves to anyone else

A few years ago, my wife and I left the Mormon church. That helped a lot. Along that line coffee makes me happy.

Game the system by having an unhappy childhood so being an adult is so much better? I enjoy being a grownup so much. What are you unhappy with? Were you happy as a kid and if so, what made you happy? I didn't like school, felt alienated and in general kids have no control over their own lives. So adulthood suits me much better.

Kind of surprised no one has mentioned it... But kids. Kids bring a lot of happiness.

Happiness is not found. It's not an object, rather a state of perception. The more you'll objectify and discretize happiness, the less likely you're to achieve it.

That being said, usually drugs.

On a serious note, two books helped me to understand this mystery a bit more

1. Zen Mind, beginner's mind by S. Suzuki
2. Flow: the psychology of optimal experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

That's the neat part,

By finding not happiness, but contentment. As you get older, you learn that to be happy, you have to be content.

Happiness is fleeting. Sometimes you're happy, sometimes you're not. I was told as a young man that what I should seek instead is contentment, because someone content with their place in life will be happier more often. That said, a lot of people find satisfaction and happiness from helping others. Volunteering, and being a part of your community gives someone a sense of belonging, and purpose.

Recognizing how my desires are never truly satisfied, and they cause me suffering. How they constantly shift and always want more. In other words I let go of my judgment and accept what I see. That doesn't mean I don't judge it at all or don't change it. It just means I'm not attached to the desire to change things. It's just a feeling, and I can act on it, but it's a conscious decision rather than a habit.

I try to embrace my hobbies. Motorcycle rides, baking, trying new beers, gaming with friends, reading, etc. It can be hard finding the time to do it all, but I try my best.

It helps that I've already made peace with the fact I'm never gonna be rich enough to do anything truly incredible, like travel the world for 6 months, or retire :/.

We all have happiness, it's just hard to see it past all the other stuff we got going on in our heads.

Contentment is easier to find than happiness

Find your thing.

For me that's been different things as I've gone through life. Currently in my 50s and enjoying riding a motorbike at weekends. When I'd ridden all the local roads so many times it was starting to get boring, I added another layer and am now riding my bike to every Village in my county. It's going to take a while, but has given another layer of interest and purpose. Many people won't understand why it's interesting to me, and that's fine, they don't have to. Finding what works for you is half the challenge.

BTW, if you've got depression, then finding happiness without resolving that is really, really difficult. Been there and absolutely everything felt bleak and pointless. Fixing that is the first step.

i tried checking at walmart, but they haven't carried it since the early 1970s

Realize you aren't going to be happy all the time. We live a life that sometimes sucks. Our grandparents, our parents, our siblings, and our friends die. Choose to remember the happy times you had with them. Go do things you like to do, remember those times when shit is bad and know that you can make more happy memories later too.

Find happiness in love, from people, from pets, maybe even your children if you choose to have some. Make others happy too if you want because happiness is better when shared with others.

I‘m completely switching up my life right now to live to 87 to be able to watch the total eclipse on my birthday

I buy my wife matching undies and bras.

It's fun for me, she appreciates the new clothes and I pick out what I want to see her in / out of.

Win win.

• Take time off from social media once in a while, or at least avoid doomscrolling all day. Bad stories generate FAR more engagement than good stories, and every form of media knows this. If 100,000 people in your area have an average-to-good day and 5 people have terrible days, all 5 stories presented to you will detail how things are in your area are terrible.

• Physical health affects mental health and vice versa. Eat healthy (or healthier). Stay hydrated. Get 7-9 hours of sleep regularly and use sleep hygeine. Get 90+ minutes of exercise (anything that raises your heartrate) a week which is like 15 minutes/day. Don't worry about doing it all immediately - if you try to change everything at once you're more likely to get overwhelmed and burn out. It's way better to make slow, sustainable changes over months than it is to do a difficult crash course for a short time and get fed up with the process.

• Do thankfulness exercises. When I go to bed at night I think of 3 things I'm thankful for in the day. On average or bad days it may be that I wasn't in constant/chronic pain, that I got to eat and drink, and that I'm in a safe place and a soft bed. Just remembering those basics (that many of us take for granted) helps keep me aware of good things in my life.

• Find ways to enjoy hobbies that require participation - arts, sports, board/video games, whatever. Just something other than passively taking in TV/online media. This will help you feel engaged and double points if it's something that allows for improvement because you'll feel rewarded as you get better.

Find an IRL community that means something to you. You have to feel like you belong somewhere, and people need a support group to help when they're down. You can't feel happy if you're lonely.

If advertising is to be believed, it's by partaking in goods and services.

Hobbies, do things you like to do. If you don't have any yet then have some fun figuring out new things to see what clicks for you

I don't chase a big paycheck. I live meagerly, and save, but live comfortably. As they say, "love what you do and you'll never work a day in your life."

Mostly, they don't

It's simple, really. Just don't search for it. Cherish the little things

For me, it’s my dogs! I love walking and playing with them. I love seeing them happy. They didn’t choose to be my pets, but it really makes me feel good to know they are happy and they love me in their own way.

For me:

1. Set goals
2. Accomplish those goals

That’s what gives me the best feedback. The more realistic goals I set and the more often I accomplish them, the better I feel. Bonus points for setting “due dates” for bigger goals and seeing if you can meet your own deadline.