The only two ways to achieve a peaceful mind are to work hard to get what you want and work on minimizing your desires. With everything you do ask yourself, is this helping me get what I want? Choose intelligence and drive, then you can get anything you want. Making the small hard decisions (avoiding sugar, working out) don’t seem significant but add up over time to make a big difference. Do things for their own sake, things that you would do even if you couldn’t tell anyone about. Loving someone, creating, playing. We all want to be creative and this will be the only option after machines take over all the automation. Embrace the beauty of nature, art, poetry and literature. “Peace is happiness at rest; happiness is peace in motion”
There are no problems outside of yourself, all of reality is in your head. We can all work towards happiness through un-learning habits and understanding more. Sustained happiness is the process of self-discovery, continual seeking of the truth. If we don’t have honesty with ourselves, we will always be in self conflict when reality confronts us with the truth. We don’t need to suppress desire, but need to understand it. Freedom is understanding where things come from. Symptoms of depression is a signal you’re going in the wrong direction and shouldn’t be suppressed with medication or other vices. Go through life with preferences but don’t let your happiness depend on any of them. Most desires are irrational emotions therefore we need to explore, question, and extrapolate the consequences of our desires. We need to stop imagining that some point in the future we will no longer have any problems and instead be at peace with who and where we are in our life. Let thoughts go through you, with no effort.
