How To Stay Happy: 4 Secrets From History’s Happiest Philosopher

Becoming happy isn’t hard. Ice cream usually does the trick. Staying happy, now there’s a challenge. Often, it doesn’t take much for us to lose our cool and let positive feelings slip away.

That said, there’s plenty of advice out there on becoming happy, but not too much on staying happy. So who can help us? I know a guy…

Baruch Spinoza. Born in 1632. His family fled to Amsterdam to escape the Portuguese Inquisition.

Now Baruch was quite the thinker. Questioned everything. Most philosophers do, but most don’t question so much that their religious community excommunicates them. Yeah, they didn’t just scold him. This was formal excommunication. The divine ejector seat.

So for the rest of his life, Baruch ground lenses for a living. He was offered a fancy university position, but he turned it down. Spent all his free time developing his ideas. Ideas that would eventually make him one of the most awesome thinkers in Western philosophy.

From the outside, it wasn’t an impressive life. He died in 1677 of either tuberculosis or silicosis (we can’t be certain because medicine pretty much hadn’t been invented yet). At the time of his death, all he owned was his lens-grinding gear, a bed, a desk and an awful lot of books.

Okay, I can feel you making that face. I get it. I am also making that face.

“What can a 17th-century possibly-tubercular philosopher/lens-grinder teach me about happiness in the 21st century?”

Every account we have of him says he was happy. Even people who didn’t like him said he was happy. This guy worked at a job that was (probably) killing him, was booted from his community, refused all the usual trappings of success and died owning very little at age 44… and yet he was very happy.

How’d he do it?

Lucky for you, he wrote a book. Not lucky for me because I had to read it. Spinoza’s Ethics is about as accessible as a geometry textbook. (I prefer my ancient wisdom to come in more accessible forms, ideally as a gummy vitamin.)

Spinoza thought we were reactive and disoriented mammals yanked around by forces and desires we barely comprehend. But he wasn’t grim about it. In fact, he’s kinda inspiring or, at least, as inspiring as you can be when you write about the human condition as if it were a mathematical proof.

He gets to the bottom of why we’re so bound by passions and how we can become freer and happier.

This time we’ll be looking at the Ethics and the Tractatus Politicus by Baruch Spinoza.

Let’s get to it…

 

“What Has To Be True For This To Make Sense?”

Say somebody cuts you off in traffic. Your immediate reaction is inevitably:

“How could they?!?”

Uh, quite easily, apparently.

“But I can’t believe they did that!”

Sure, you can. They did it. See?

We say we don’t understand something but we’re not trying to understand. We just judge. Then the anger builds. “Obviously, this person is pure evil. They’re a narcissist, a monster, a criminal.” The nouns start and the thinking stops. Anger has you believing this person could have chosen to behave properly but instead, because they are inherently cruel, they deliberately chose to ruin your day.

During moments like this, my shorthand for Spinoza’s perspective is that we should ask, “What has to be true for this to make sense?” Look at it more like a physics problem: What was the cause of this?

Because that person is an effect. Nobody’s the sole cause of themselves. Genetics, upbringing, mood, context, whether they ate recently. So many things outside of someone’s control direct their behavior.

Ironically, when you and I screw up, it’s those factors that we think of first: “Look, I didn’t mean it. I didn’t get much sleep last night…” But with other people, suddenly we’re free-will absolutists.

“So you’re saying nobody is responsible for their behavior?!?”

I just checked Merriam-Webster and it says “justification” and “explanation” are not synonyms.

A tiger doesn’t choose to be a tiger. It doesn’t lick its paws, debate existing as a camel instead, and then finally settle on being a striped murder carpet. And if it attacks an antelope you don’t say, “WHY ARE YOU BEHAVING THIS WAY? RESPECT THE SOCIAL CONTRACT!” You might be grossed out but you wouldn’t be surprised, because it’s a tiger doing what tigers do.

That said, if the tiger was in your backyard you wouldn’t say, “Tigers do what tigers do, guess we have to let it eat Phil.” No, you’d get somebody out there with a tranquilizer gun immediately. You wouldn’t hate and blame the tiger for being a tiger but you would absolutely address the issue.

Enough about wildlife. Somebody does you wrong. Correct them. Or stop talking to them. Or call the cops. Build a tiger-proof fence. But you don’t need to be shocked and you don’t need to hate them. That just upsets you.

Whenever you get bothered, ask the question: “What has to be true for this to make sense?” Maybe they’re having a terrible day or their genetics make them an oblivious person. Look for the real cause, not blame.

Anger tells you very little. It actually prevents you from learning. Looking for causes gives you information. “When Sarah is tired, she gets irritable. In the future I should hang out with her earlier in the day.” This is far more helpful than “SHE IS EVIL AND MUST BE DESTROYED.”

And science shows Spinoza was right. When people consider causes or mitigating circumstances, they don’t get as bothered by bad behavior. They’re still capable of effectively dealing with it, in fact, they may be more capable. But they don’t get as upset.

One little question reduces your anger and improves your problem-solving. Spinoza would say it frees us from bondage. No, not the spicy leather-attire kind. He means we’re not dragged around by our emotions. When we look for causes and use reason, when we make the inexplicable, well, splickable, we don’t get worked up. We keep our cool.

(To learn the uncomfortable reason you keep self-sabotaging, click here.)

So what’s an even easier way to tame emotions that threaten your happiness?

 

Name That Feeling

In part V of the Ethics, Spinoza says: “An emotion which is a passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of it.”

Getting specific shrinks the problem. It can still be intimidating but it’s no longer Earth-sized. It’s now problem-sized. Problems you can handle. Earths are another story.

So name the problem. Name what you’re feeling. A little semantic hygiene can make a huge difference. Don’t let the feeling be an abstract ether that surrounds you with worst-case scenarios. Be concrete so you can get a handle on it.

To a surprising degree, modern neuroscience agrees with Spinoza. UCLA researcher Matthew Lieberman found that putting feelings into words helps your amygdala relax.

Simply saying, “I feel worried” can make you less emotionally reactive.

(To learn ancient wisdom’s 5 secrets to a good life, click here.)

But what about when we’re dealing with really big feelings? We usually handle these all wrong…

 

Overcome Emotions With Bigger Emotions

We often try to deal with negative feelings by thinking about them. But introspection rarely evicts the blues. Introspection usually just leads to more introspection.

The mistake we make is forgetting that we’re human beings with bodies. We act like our body is just a bus that our brain drives around. But we can physically do things that make us feel better, bypassing the brain altogether.

Spinoza says, “An emotion can neither be hindered nor destroyed except by a contrary and stronger emotion.”

Fight fire with fire. And that means doing stuff that produces a bigger positive emotion. I know you wanted deep insights and epiphanies about what’s going on in your head, leading to a Freudian revelation that would fundamentally change…

No. Stop. Just go for a walk with a friend.

Yes, science agrees. Behavioral Activation Therapy is one of the most effective treatments for depression and, to criminally oversimplify, it means: do stuff that makes you feel good because doing stuff that makes you feel good makes you feel good.

Call the funny friend. Play that awesome song. Sometimes you have to just get out of the house and get your stupid heart pumping with somebody who never fails to make you laugh, so your brain goes, “We’re doing happy stuff now? Gotcha. I’ll get the joy chemicals flowing. Gimme a sec…”

(To learn how to get “unstuck” with a little help from philosophy, click here.)

But maybe you can’t go out. Or maybe you feel totally, completely, utterly overwhelmed. What’s Spinoza’s nuclear option when there’s an existential threat to your good mood?

Don’t worry, it’s not difficult to do…

 

Zoom Out

Sometimes our problems look so huge. You know why? Because we’re staring at them too closely. Zoom in enough and a pimple looks like a volcano.

Spinoza has this idea: sub specie aeternitatis. It translates as “under the aspect of eternity.” It’s the sort of phrase that seems like it should be on parchment. For our purposes, it means “zoom out.”

Got a problem? Step back from it.

No, farther.

Much farther. Zoom out past your home, past your country, past your century. Get some perspective on how in the big scheme of things, this issue is very small.

Concretely, when you feel overwhelmed, ask, “Is this gonna matter ten years from now?”

The answer is almost certainly “no.” That is, unless you keep defibrillating it with your attention.

“But, Eric, is this proven by science?”

I’m so glad you asked. Not exactly if we want to take Spinoza literally, but there’s a close cousin. Researchers call it “temporal distancing” and there’s a study on the subject that’s appropriately named: “This Too Shall Pass.” When people looked at their problems from a distant-future perspective, they felt better.

Take it from the lens grinder: you need a wider-angle lens when looking at your problems. Zoom out. Imagine looking at them ten years from now. Imagine looking at them from another galaxy.

Then come back. Don’t stay out there among the stars.

You have laundry to do.

(To learn how to overcome burnout, click here.)

Okay, we’ve covered a lot. Time to round it all up and we’ll also look at the unexpected (and maybe unwelcome) twist in the “What has to be true for this to make sense?” technique that can really improve your life…

 

Sum Up

Here’s how to stay happy…

• “What Has To Be True For This To Make Sense?”: You can rage at the system and walk around angry, or you can seek to understand and calmly get better results. (I really hate when dead philosophers claw their way out of the grave to demolish my favorite coping methods.)
• Name That Feeling: As Dan Siegel says, “Name it to tame it.”
• Overcome Emotions With Bigger Emotions: No matter how long you introspect, you’re never going to find a little lever in your brain that says “PULL TO BECOME LESS UPSET.” Get out of your head and go do something that has historically resulted in happy feelings.
• Zoom Out: We’ve all dealt with the kind of overwhelm that makes you suspect life has a sense of humor, though not necessarily a nice one. Mentally step back and ask, “Will this matter in ten years?”

“What has to be true for this to make sense?” is useful when people are behaving badly. Now comes the inconvenient part:

You’re people too.

So am I. We also have causes.

Yeah, I was really enjoying the part where Spinoza explained why other people were impossible. Unfortunately, this insight covers more than humanity’s very disappointing examples. It also applies to both the organism reading this and the organism writing it.

Your genetics weren’t assigned with your approval. You started forming a personality before you could even pronounce personality. And that whole stew was stirred by parents, hormones, culture, formative humiliations, and whatever context you happen to be in. Face it: how you behave has occasionally been dramatically altered by how long it’s been since you last ate.

Spinoza knew this and in the Ethics he said understanding causes as they relate to you was actually the path to freedom.

It might be a little uncomfortable to feel you’re not as in charge of your behavior as you’d like, but it can also really help. When we screw up, our natural instinct isn’t always to play detective, it’s to play prosecutor. We beat ourselves up. We ruminate and feel guilt or shame.

Spinoza thought this was a bad idea. We punish ourselves and mistake that for progress. But that doesn’t actually change anything. Guilt and shame reduce our power to act, to rectify things and make them better.

You didn’t choose all the things that cause your behavior, but you can understand your patterns. What provokes you? What can you do to prevent that from happening again?

Seek to understand yourself better. And then cut yourself some slack.

Spinoza thought the best thing we can hope for is rational self-acceptance. He called it “acquiescentia in se ipso.” A useful modern cousin that’s easier to pronounce is self-compassion. It makes people more willing to learn after failure, to repair a transgression and to avoid repeating it.

Learn about yourself and make better choices going forward. “Seeking causes” may sound cold, but it’s not. Turns out the path to being happier and growing comes down to one simple thing:

When you or someone else behaves badly, don’t rush to judgment.

Instead, just get curious.