Spontaneous Happiness: Step-by-step to peak emotional wellbeing

Contentment, I think, has more to do with being at peace and feeling good about who you are and what you have without regard to satisfying your desires and needs.

Serenity also comes naturally from acceptance, especially of “the things I cannot change,”

If you are in good emotional health, you should be able to respond appropriately to whatever situations you encounter: to feel appropriately happy about good fortune and appropriately sad about bad, to be able to feel appropriately angry or frustrated about the state of the world and the annoying behavior of others and to let go of those feelings o

Most of us will never be able to do that, but what we can do is break the habit of paying constant attention to our thoughts.

Whatever your external circumstances, you will not know ease if you are not at ease with yourself.

by the subjects. In his excellent book The Compassionate Mind, psychologist Paul Gilbert,

is also a goal of many religions and philosophies that recognize that the source of human unhappiness is our habit of comparing our experiences to those of others and finding our reality to be wanting.

On occasion, both when things are going well and when they aren’t, I have a profound sense that everything is just as it should be, that my opinions about my situation are irrelevant. That realization is freeing.

Eventually I came to accept my depressive episodes as existential in nature—part of my being—to be endured and not inflicted on others.