Here’s something that took me a long time to realize. There is a technique, a practice that can bring and sustain happiness.

It’s easy to be happy when everything is going well, not so easy when life goes sideways. To gain and maintain a sense of happiness in any circumstance, there is a natural sequence of thoughts and actions you can take. I think of these as pillars of happiness.

Natural Order

There is a specific sequence to these steps, these pillars. Like many processes in nature, each step can happen only when the previous step has been activated.

It’s like the old saying, “You have to walk before you can run.” It’s a cliche, but it’s also true.

If you want to be sustainably happy (or happier), it is worth your time end energy to learn how each of these pillars works, and how each enables the next.

Mindset

It all starts with mindset. If you follow my work, you know I spend a great deal of time talking about mindset, and for good reason. Your mindset is the lens through which you see the world, and focuses your thoughts in a certain direction.

Your thoughts, in turn, determine your actions, and your actions create your life, moment by moment.

The best thing about mindset is also the attribute that surprises most people: you get to choose it.

Yep, you read that correctly. In terms of mindset, you need never be a “victim of circumstance.” Even if you have no control over some situations in your life, you always have complete control of how you react to those situations. Or at least you do with a little practice.

Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, said, “Although you may not always be able to avoid difficult situations, you can modify the extent to which you can suffer by how you choose to respond to the situation.”

Once you assimilate this part of mindset, the first pillar, you can experience more happiness simply by deciding to be happy.

There is much to be said about control of your mindset, too much to be covered here. But know that it is possible to tame your distracted, Western mind to focus on peace instead of anxiety, order instead of chaos.

The work - the practice - necessary to achieve this focus is discipline. Create a clear picture of what you want to think and what you want to feel, and ignore and discard anything that isn’t that. It takes practice, but again, is worth the effort.

The Dalai Lama also said, “A disciplined mind leads to happiness. An undisciplined mind leads to suffering.”

Here is a personal example: I was ready to take a long journey that would keep me on the road for more than a month. I had not slept well and as a result, got a later start than I had planned.

When I got to my truck, the battery was dead and the truck wouldn’t start. When I jumped the battery, it wouldn’t hold a charge. When I went to replace the battery, one of the cables fell apart.

As I noticed frustration and irritation starting to creep into my mindset, I stopped and consciously, intentionally thought: “Will frustration and anger make this situation better or worse?”

The answer was so obvious that I actually laughed out loud and said, “This journey will progress in its own time and at its own pace. I might as well relax and enjoy the ride.”

And relax I did. And I enjoyed the trip immensely, delayed though it was, because I was in control of my emotions and did not allow them to control me.

And yes, it took lots of meditation and practice to get there.

Purpose

So control of mindset is valuable when you need to choose how to respond to an undesirable situation. But what can you do to have a long-term attitude of happiness? How can we set our sights such that our natural state of being is one of unhurried calm and peace?

The second pillar on the way to a true baseline of happiness is purpose. If we have chosen a purpose, a meaning for our existence, it leads us to focus on something outside of ourselves.

And a larger, external view relegates our personal challenges to a lesser position. In other words, when we focus on a bigger mission, we have less energy to worry about “me.”

Again, wisdom from our Tibetan Buddhist friend: “We are visitors on this planet. We are here for one hundred years at the very most. During that period we must try to do something good, something useful, with our lives. if you contribute to other people's happiness, you will find the true meaning of life.”

Let me be a bit vulnerable and transparent with another personal example.

As much as I have studied and practiced these concepts, I am still human, and my very flawed and human ego still loves to jump up and ambush me:

“Why don’t I have more followers and clients?” “Maybe I don’t have anything relevant to say, after all.” “Should I do something else with my time?”

If I have control of my mindset, I can then choose to focus on why I do what I do, and suddenly my personal challenges are rightly reframed as minor bumps in a much longer road.

The goal is not about me. How many people subscribe to my Substack account or follow my Instagram page is irrelevant. My purpose is to share my decades of experience and training in such a way that another person might find a more peaceful path to their own sense of purpose.

A sense of purpose also immediately erases personal ego distress like “imposter syndrome” (which I have written elsewhere is not a “syndrome” at all, but a natural side effect of growth and service.) “What if I’m not as good as everyone thinks” is replaced by “I must do my best work because someone, somewhere needs what I have to say.”

When you have a practiced, disciplined mindset to reframe your attitude and action and a purpose larger than yourself to keep you going, you are truly on the way to sustainable happiness.

Happiness

These two pillars of thought and action, mindset and purpose, are the foundation of what I call Hardcore Happiness. I use the term “hardcore” as a reminder that true, lasting happiness and well-being takes effort, and that when achieved, it is resilient to even the most dire circumstances.

Hardcore Happiness is a major part of my own purpose and I have written about it at length. Happiness isn’t simply something that you hope happens to you, it is something that you work to maintain, every day, because the effort is well worth it. More than just the roller coaster of good times followed by a crash as daily reality sets in, true happiness is a constant, steady way of being that withstands life’s inevitable challenges.

Think satisfaction at the end of long, productive day, as opposed to a few hours of giddiness at a party. Picture the unhurried, relaxed feeling of peace you feel around trusted friends and loved ones as opposed to the three minutes of excitement you get when you ride Space Mountain at Disneyland.

If you are scientifically inclined, imagine serotonin and oxytocin as opposed to the “gimme more” of dopamine.

Momentary “hedonic” happiness is great; enjoy it whenever you can! But don’t chase it. Only the long-lasting “eudaimonic” form of happiness, true mental and physical well-being, is worthy as a goal.

One last thought from the Dalai Lama: “The three factors that seem to have the greatest influence on increasing our happiness are our ability to reframe our situation more positively, our ability to experience gratitude, and our choice to be kind and generous.”

All three of these decisions are available to you, every minute of every day, with the right mindset.

Pillars of Happiness

When you have some degree of understanding and control over mindset and purpose - the necessary pillars that uphold true, sustainable peace and well-being - happiness will become your natural default state, not a welcome but infrequent visitor.



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To learn more about how to use these concepts or to inquire about working with me, you can contact me on the Hardcore Happiness website, the comments section on my Substack or Medium accounts or the Hardcore Happiness blog page. If you have found value in this article, follow my Instagram account for daily insights, or my X account for occasional tweets. To support this community, you can Buy Me A Coffee or donate through my Patreon account.

- JWW