What Drives You

The cause of unhappiness is not laziness, procrastination, depression, pain or fear.

The cause of unhappiness is the desire for good experience. Your attachment to pleasurable experiences is making you feel bad.

And the reason people crave pleasurable experience is because they feel like they have no purpose; they have nothing to live for. So people who lack a higher purpose, their highest purpose becomes their own selfish pleasure. Chasing that good experience is the only thing that gives them purpose in life. So when they inevitably fail to get that good experience, their life feels completely worthless.

It’s not your fault. Society has never taught us what to live for. Society has conditioned us to glorify happiness because that's what sells products. People get trapped in the happiness mill that never ends.

Some people can adopt logic with the goal of feeling good rather than simply because it's the right thing to do. If these people truly find pleasure in doing logical things, it is a more sustainable way of attaining good experience. Realizing this has allowed people to click for selfish reasons and achieve a selfless state.

Forget about right action and doing what is right. If you only care about feeling good, realizing that not valuing feeling good will actually make you feel even better. Feeling good isn't the problem - the problem is being emotionally attached to feeling good. It’s the chase that makes us miserable.

Understanding this is not only the cure for depression, anxiety, loneliness, etc. it is also the key to purpose, meaning, and a happier life. As soon as you stop chasing feeling good, the only thing that's left is doing what's right. The moment you stop caring about your good experience, it is so liberating.

At this point, the most common question is, "Isn't this a sacrifice?" The only reason people see it as a sacrifice is because they value feeling good. If they saw their desire for good experience for what it really is, the cause of all their suffering, it wouldn't be a sacrifice at all. Adopting logic and doing what is right would actually feel freeing.

How do you let go? Easy. The moment you start feeling bad, tell yourself it is because you value your good experience. Gradually, you will stop focusing on feeling good and doing what is right will come naturally, putting you in a flow state, paradoxically leading to better, sustained happiness in the long run.

Forget about doing good, taking right action. No matter what your goal in life is, realizing that not valuing feeling good will help you achieve so much more. Don’t even do it for others, do it for yourself.

This concept applies in social situations as well. The more you value how you come across to others, the more anxiety you'll feel and the worse you'll come across. The harder you try to attract someone, the less attractive you will be.

Craving good experiences is ruining your life.

Set yourself free.

Going about selflessly making an impact doesn’t work for most people because they feel worthless. They don't feel like their actions matter or that life itself is meaningless. If people have nothing to live for why would they care about other people? That reaction is understandable because that is how they truly feel about themselves.

What do you do once you stop chasing good experience?

Start by making small improvements and doing little things around your immediate environment to first help yourself. Once you have yourself and your own environment in order, you can then branch out and begin helping others. You will realize that helping other people is more fulfilling than your own pleasureable experience. You'll start giving and helping others for the right reason because you won't be doing it to feel good, you'll be doing it because it's just what is right.

Eventually you'll stop wondering "what can I do?" and instead you'll be taking action automatically, achieving a state of flow. Flow is the ultimate state for your brain. Your brain craves flow, even more than happiness.

This is how you achieve flow, a sense of inner peace and harmony. Because even if you experience a bad feeling, you won’t overthink it, you can explain it and you understand it and can just roll with it without breaking your flow.

This state of flow never ends. You stop chasing good experience, you don’t even chase doing what is right. You just are.

It’s about accepting what you are.