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Monday’s Stay True To Yourself Letters
Happiness, expectations, and Confucius
Toss this idea around: if you aren’t happy, maybe are mistaken.
I read this from Mark Manson, which confirms a lot of what I already feel about staying true in relation to my erring in unhappiness:
“Unhappiness is a mistake… If you’ve read a number of articles or books about happiness, you’ve probably come across, at some point, the following equation:
Happiness = Reality — Expectations
German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s principle work, The World as Will and Representation writes, “All happiness depends on the proportion of what we claim and what we receive. It is immaterial how great or small the two quantities of this proportion are, and the proportion can be established just as well by diminishing the first quantity as by increasing the second.”
So let me get this right…
To stop being unhappy, I either lower my expectations and never be attached to what I actually get, or I live so well, my reality is never below my expectations?
Regardless, unhappiness is mistake in perception. My expectations about what reality should feel like are wrong — or inversely, my assumptions…
