Living

I came across Yale’s Science of Well-Being course recently, taught by psychologist Laurie Santos, and it immediately caught my attention. Not because I think I need a university course to tell me how to be happy, but because happiness is one of those things we all think we understand until we actually stop and ask ourselves a simple question: What really makes us happy?

Most of us probably have an answer ready.

More money. More freedom. Better health. A better relationship. More travel. A nicer home. Less stress. More success. We create these mental checklists of things we believe will finally get us to that place where life feels good.

And yet, one of the central ideas in the Yale course is that our minds can be surprisingly bad at predicting what will actually make us happy. The things we think will transform our lives often don’t have the lasting effect we imagine, while the things that genuinely contribute to well-being can be much simpler.

That made me think about how much of my own life has been spent trying to add things.

Add accomplishments. Add experiences. Add money. Add travel. Add relationships. Add goals. Add another thing to look forward to.

But what if happiness isn’t always about adding something?

What if sometimes it’s about removing something?

Not removing responsibilities or people or challenges. I’m talking about the things we carry inside ourselves long after they have stopped serving any purpose.

Resentment.
Regret.
Anger.
Jealousy.
Fear.
The endless replaying of something someone said ten years ago.
The conversation we wish had gone differently.
The mistake we still punish ourselves for.
The imaginary future disaster we’ve already experienced a hundred times in our heads.
These things can occupy an enormous amount of space.

And the strange thing is that the event itself may have lasted only minutes, while the emotion can live inside us for years.

Someone hurts us, and they’re gone. We keep the hurt.
Someone disappoints us, and the moment passes. We keep replaying the disappointment.
Something doesn’t work out, and life moves forward. We keep asking, Why did this happen to me?

I’ve done all of these things.

Maybe that’s why the idea of happiness being connected to our habits of thinking resonates with me so much. We don’t just experience life as it happens. We experience our interpretation of it. And sometimes our minds take something that happened once and turn it into something we experience over and over again.

That doesn’t mean negative emotions are bad.

I don’t think happiness means walking around pretending everything is wonderful. That’s not life. Sadness has a place. Anger has a place. Disappointment has a place. Grief certainly has a place.

The problem isn’t necessarily feeling those emotions.

Maybe the problem is holding onto them long after they’ve finished teaching us what they came to teach us.

I’ve started thinking about negative emotions almost like carrying a suitcase.

At first, you have a reason to pick it up. Something happened, and you need to process it. You need to understand it. Maybe you need to grieve it.

But imagine carrying that suitcase everywhere for the next ten years. Eventually, you might forget that you have a choice about whether to put it down. And perhaps that is one of the things I’m learning about happiness as I get older.

Sometimes I don’t need another suitcase. I need to put one down.

The Yale course isn’t promising some magical formula where we can eliminate unhappiness. Its purpose is much more practical: understanding the misconceptions and mental habits that get in the way of well-being, and then deliberately practicing habits that can improve it.

That distinction matters to me. Because happiness isn’t something I want to chase anymore.

I’ve spent enough of my life chasing things. I think I’d rather become better at not getting in the way of it.

Maybe that means noticing when I’m worrying about something that hasn’t happened.
Maybe it means recognizing when I’m replaying something that cannot be changed.
Maybe it means forgiving someone without needing them to know I’ve forgiven them.
Maybe it means forgiving myself.
Maybe it means recognizing that a bad moment doesn’t have to become a bad day, and a bad day doesn’t have to become a bad life.

And maybe it means making room for the ordinary moments that are already good.

A conversation.
A laugh.
A walk.
A glass of bubble tea.
A child swinging higher and higher while laughing without caring who’s watching.
A movie that makes you think.
A moment when you suddenly realize that, despite everything that has happened, you’re okay.

Perhaps happiness isn’t a destination we eventually arrive at after fixing everything. Perhaps it’s something we experience in the space we create when we stop carrying everything.

I’m still learning.

But maybe that’s the real lesson for me.

Happiness isn’t always about finding more reasons to be happy. Sometimes it’s about finding fewer reasons to be unhappy. And sometimes the first step is simply asking:

“What am I carrying today that I don’t need to carry anymore?“