The TRUE MEANING of LIFE is that HAPPINESS is subjective well-being, an INDIVIDUALLY REACTIVE STATE VARIABLE to howsoever favorable circumstances

Standing certain of all one seeks, may only demonstrate failure to imagine better. Technology should exist to aid and empower us all to do more and better together. Alas, it is the culture gone awry that cares ever less. Indeed, anyone still so callow and venial as to continue pipedreaming that all on a whim and without focus or attachment, perhaps reducible to mediation by the next inane simple-minded paint-by-numbers webgizmo, we can ever actually maximize our achievement and satisfaction in cyber-Utopia, has cut costs but lost values and just doesn't get it.

If You Desire Anything You've Never Had, Try Something You've Never Done
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” — Simone Weil

Your attention, please! The challenges and dynamic of human relationship are similar despite individual differences, regardless of context and specifics:

Do you even know: What kinds of interaction do you yourself most acutely lack?

And how, instead, might such fulfilling social interaction best be consistently achieved and such happy experience sustained? That is the question!

Happiness comes in meeting ones needs for capable interaction with responsible others.
Satisfying interpersonal interaction and connection in order to successfully resolve loneliness and boredom may very much depend upon the specific different choice and change in the very nature
and deliberate purpose of interpersonal interactivity.
"Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight." —Thomas Carlyle

Trustworthy reciprocal cooperation elicits unique joy and satisfaction,
as does proactive creativity.
“The only truly happy people are children and the creative minority.” — Jean Caldwell
Thus our challenge : to forge a CREATIVE MINORITY!
Stimulus needs of optimal reciprocal engagement include steady emotional support, exploration and fun, active participation, sensory stimulation, with opportunity for social interaction, freedom from undue pressure and dystress though suffused with a degree of pleasurable intensity or: eustress, with varied selection and alternatives of successive novel challenges neither too easy and boring nor too difficult and frustrating, promoting lifelong growth in a broad range of skills and interests, intellectual, physical, aesthetic, social and emotional.

Happy people are sociable, extroverted and known to reach out, Talk More Seriously and make less small talk, exert effort in order to actively make things happen, attentively pursue new understandings, choose creative activities, seek new achievements, and thereby uplift their own thoughts and emotions, even improving their circumstances by centering their lives around whatever pleases them most. Activity and goals thereof ever put forth must be varied and novel yet well-suited to personality, practiced diligently and successfully in a continuous stream of fresh positive experiences so as to outweigh negativity bias. Schedule and routine must also be flexible in order to avoid getting into a rut.

It turns out that staying in high spirits is actually hard work! But then, happy people are known to place an extremely high priority upon happiness. A less labor intensive and demanding individual disposition to happiness might conceivably operate by natural tendencies for excitation to negative emotions to deflate more quickly and excitation to positive emotions to deflate more slowly. But your mileage may vary!

“Science has pretty much established that your circumstances are not very relevant to your happiness.” declares Stephen Mills with such blithe and unoriginal cocksurety. “He who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.” opines Samuel Johnson. Bah, humbug!

For in the biting prose of Kathleen Norris: "When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot?" And in much like sentiment Jonathan Swift quips: "The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes." Indeed, even in the very words of Dr. Samuel Johnson: "Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates."

Clearly present circumstances have every bearing upon happiness, and therefore individual power and agency over ones circumstances, all no less so than personality and psychiatric issues from the past. After all, happiness is a reactive inner condition variable to changeable external circumstances. And we've heard it all before. How paradoxically effete the introversion of all such ever popular Zen self-reliance becomes! For as in the celebrated words of John Donne: "No man is an island." It is true of course, that happiness remains quite distinct from mere material success. But it hardly follows therefrom, that happiness is entirely derived from inner life and any simple choice in self-help/improvement of the right thinking along with solitary individual behavior sets or: habits, going it alone. How boring, lonely, alienated and unfulfilling!

Thus, character, fortitude and functionality aside, the Capability Approach pioneered by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, of critical analytic examination of the effects of various social institutions upon the development of capabilities of people subjected to their authority, is the idea that individual substantive freedom to lead a life one has ones own reasons to value, is both the primary end objective and the principle means towards a good life with autonomy and respect, all depending upon accessibility of whatever needed resources, and will be attainable when human beings are free to chose in actual practice and not merely in theory, indeed really able to attain that which they have reasons to consider important to do or to be or become. In this sense, human development ultimately denotes human flourishing, even at most Eudemonic, while poverty is whatever obstructs or undermines aforesaid capability, any lack of various real practical and practicable freedoms, as manifest in whatever corresponding accessible resources, that people value and have personal reason to do so.

Serving as a critique and situation analysis in evaluation and interpersonal comparison of well-being and justice in the evaluation of individual advantage and social arrangements, the Capability Approach to wellbeing and development therefore evaluates circumstances according to impact upon individual capabilities.

Because, Existentially, what is freedom, indeed for whom is freedom? In order to be sustained in practice, values must be reinforced, kept both in view and within reach. Heteronymous false values are typically promulgated by heavy indoctrination, but the striving for true human values is awakened by sheer temptation in the form of autonomy support in accordance with the Capability Approach.

Whereas, somewhat patronizing rebuttal to the above argues how simple beings are most abundantly in truest wealth, enjoying as they do, easier access to simple pleasures because being as they may be, blissfully ignorant and oblivious so as thereby to indulge in their pleasures unspoiled by other worries. For who so increaseth knowledge and wisdom, increaseth vexation, indignation and sorrow. What then, has forever eroded all such hitherto innocent simplicity for humankind?

Indeed, a major complication and suffering unique to human childbirth is the sheer size of the babies head squeezing through the pregnant woman's pelvis during labor. Indeed, for the required resources, the massive human brain demands up to one quarter of the total cardiac blood output. All because competition for fitness within our species, drove evolution of the ever larger human brain far beyond the initial needs and challenges of environmental adaptation and true peril of survival then eliminated with human success and comfort, in the process creating new uniquely human stimulus appetites, all too often underserved and even repressed as simply inconveniently complex. But as the saying goes, elation is a flower that blooms only when you do, and that is precisely why:
: "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know." — Ernest Hemingway
Hence, the best strivings of human civilization, social interaction, arts and science, at there very best, comprise social institutions of culture contrived expressly for the alleviation of lonely boredom without natural privation, danger and violence. And so, happiness, fulfilling resilient self-efficacy and optimal well being derive from the challenge of achievement, eustress, interest therein sustained through the pursuit by anticipation, no longer of real safety in any actual peril, no actual struggle for survival, but instead, of the momentary release from contrasting worry and frustration following a problem solved, truth revealed, a new concept grasped, an ideation expressed, a fear resolved and abated or a desire realized and satiated. Hence, though Nietzsche advanced that happiness from arête is cultivated only out of hardship, misery and failure; thankfully, the truth of he matter may ever be at all by any measure the less extreme. Because in confrontation with situations that any reasonable person would deem insurmountable, only the influence of unreasonable people can provide vision, experience and direction in order to restore hope.
: “Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.”; — George Bernard Shaw

All carrot and no stick!

The Existential human condition most particularly as centered about work, is oft times disparagingly compared to the tragic and empty travails of the long suffering pack mule, eternally egged on by the unattainable carrot ever dangled before its nose, and reluctantly spurred on by the very real sting of the whip stick. How unreasonably sublime, then, would be howsoever at least relative freedom from all such harassment, and rich intrinsic reward always genuinely within reach. But please, never a proverbial carrot metaphorically so fulsomely delicious as to permanently kill all apatite!

Opines Jim Carrey : “I think that everybody should get rich and famous sod get everything that they dreamed so that they can see that it is not the answer.” Truly? To begin with, what 's the question? And moreover, what is the implication? Are all such worldly values actually superfluous, or as per Mallow's Pyramid, foundational to any transcendent authenticity in self-realization?

Actually income, among other things, is very important to happiness. But that said, all questions of diminishing and perhaps even negative returns remain open. Indeed, what is called the Easterlin paradox, states that while richer people are indeed happier than poorer people, and affluent more Individualistic cultures are happier than poorer more collectivisticly repressive cultures, nevertheless, as countries get richer and become more affluent, they become no happier. But perhaps this is a misinterpretation. Perhaps people in these countries, in effect, grade themselves for happiness, on a relative curve, their expectations rising in accordance with the mean, indeed not in frustration so much as even in even somewhat blithe optimism. In short, maybe some of us yet reject Nihilism and still do believe in progress!

The much maligned hedonic treadmill in pursuit of happiness, may even illicit anticipatory eustress rather than dYstress, only provided ongoing, fresh, novel and active dynamic rather than static goals ever put forth, with the stimulus of new desires and ambitions ever to exceed those achieved and gratified, all motivating growth and thriving progress from novelty with difficulties and crucial discontent sufficient to challenge but never so excessive as to completely frustrate and deadlock. -perpetual fulfillment rather than eternal disappointment, even should one live forever:

In the words of James Arthur Baldwin: “Sex is like air. It's not important unless you aren't getting any. Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.” In most every important way, any modern day vagrant sleeping in the back of their car, lives better than an 18th century French nobleman in their palace. With technological advance, all standards of living rise to unprecedented new heights. Moreover, in the imminent future, everyone will be young, fit and suitably fuckable! So perhaps there are worse risks than becoming blasé and ennuied: Indeed, there is all that inane Nihilistic Luddite propaganda towards sheer anticipatory ingratitude!

Mystical traditions including such as Buddhism and the Zen ever yearn for the peace of sublime apathy, by means of inducing the overall behavioral extinction called: Zen cessation, emotional self violence in the cultivation of stunned and exhausted shock, being the fraudulent ongoing counterfeit of contentment, contentment that even according to the the more Heraclitian Zen (in such colossal self contradiction) is so vastly overrated to begin with! Regardless all other exhortation to moderation along the middle road of Siddhartha, in the manifestly immoderate perfectionist Utopism of the Zen, the entrenched stubborn measure and evaluation of all things against impossible ideal totalities, the Zen much like unto Theology, often generates non existent snares and worries even such as to put stereotypical neurotic Judaism to shame! To wit, that everything good is actually bad, because if one likes it, one will only be doomed to dissatisfaction from wanting more! Au contraire, however, only exactly such passing frustration, if we must call it so, gives us anything to look forward to.

Though in the Hebrew Testament, is it so lovely writ, how Abraham died, satiated with days. And not to be outdone, various fictional characters in tropic Deathist propaganda pandering, have committed suicide or submitted themselves to euthanasia, right on schedule, brimming with life satisfaction! In reality however, rising expectations in health care, in life span, in sheer yearning for invulnerability, have continually raised expectations. Yes, even while strictly Hedonic pleasures fully met may be known to result in satiation, rising expectations fuel even the will to continue living. How frustrating! -For Deathist apologetics.

If indeed happiness is contentment, then no moment of truly excellent circumstances could ever become burdensome, much less terminally so, even extended unto eternity, or for that matter, unworthy of pursuit. Because, actually, happiness is not contentment: The creative stimulus of fully engaged challenge is the remedy to boredom amid all too quickly familiar, accustomed and habituated modern safety and comfort free from the suffering of violence and danger.

• The Progress Paradox

• pleasure/reality principles

• The appropriateness of grief?

In my own brazen contempt for purported power of positive thinking extending even merely to the extent of the practice of gratitudes, of contentment in counting one's blessings, I do make allowance for one exception as regarding progress at all, indeed, even to the extent only of exchanging bigger problems for smaller ones, which is assuredly can be nothing to be whining about so.

Pain persists until cause is removed and injury healed. And such is the appropriateness of grief. Indeed, in the ongoing counterfiet of contentment, Zen or Behaviorist bio-Utopian cessation strategies howsoever of blotting out the pain might be much like unto simply letting the mercury out from the thermometer when the temperature climbs too high and then being surprised at succumbing to heat stroke all the same!

Whereas, much by contrast, happiness is transient, impermanent and at best renewable. Happiness cannot be possessed. Happiness is dynamic, a journey not a destination, a striving not an achievement. Not just overbearingly contrived distressfully alienating punishment and reward systems of manipulative materialistic compensatory sublimation, subtext only ever signaling a dire lack of sufficiently engaging intrinsic value, but rather, instead, any howsoever genuine new positive events, must always be experienced in order to sustain happiness and even in order to forestall overjustification effect.

And that is as it should be. Because the innate aggressive imperative of pleasure principle is motivation to avoid pain and thereby harm even while seeking gratification, immediate and impulsive or else realistically deferred, and thereby, ultimately, advantage. And hope is no less indispensible. Indeed, beyond maintaining past gains in peace, only by ever and further raised expectations, the sweetness of temptation fired by ambition, does even the brightest flower of robust democracy ever rise to improve and exceed sheer complacent and orderly mediocrity.

We are all too often entirely justified in unhappiness with our circumstances or situation. Discontent and ambition have driven humanity to confront and overcome the challenges we face. Therefore, the rejection of reactive unhappiness is nothing more than a manipulative exhortation to compliant docility.

There is no "paradox of prosperity" says Daniel Ben-Ami:

[That] people are dissatisfied with their lot can be seen as a healthy motive for change. Humanity has historically progressed by constantly trying to improve its position. As a result people are better off than ever before. In this sense unhappiness should be welcomed. It is a sign of ambition and a drive to progress rather than one of inherent misery. In contrast, the essentially conservative message of the happiness gurus is that people should be happy with their lot.

From here it should be clear that there is no paradox of prosperity. The rise of mass affluence is an incredibly positive development. It has bolstered the quality of people’s lives enormously. But there never was any guarantee that such progress would bring happiness. One of the most positive qualities of human beings is that they often want more than they have got.

Indeed:

"It's puzzling that today the happiest people tend to have the most desires - they find a wider range of stimuli carry greater incentive-reward than do depressives etc. Enhancing dopamine function increases both pleasure and desire/incentive-motivation.”

— David Pearce

From consciousness accrues the capacity for intentional activity, known key to the flow of intrinsic reactive happiness. Far from non attachment, happy people are known to involve themselves reaching out and exerting every effort in order to actively make things happen, pursue new understandings, seek new achievements, and thereby uplift their own thoughts and emotions and even improve their circumstances. -To celebrate fulfillment precisely because it awakens fresh desire and vitality of eustress. Not to extol lonely boredom for the morbid peace it brings! -repugnant Zen Nihilism ever extolling non involvement and the virtues of inertia, mired in the salvation anxiety of desperate Zen attachment to mythic non attachment questing for the emptiness of holier than thou stagnation, and standing in denial and value-destruction not only of material wellbeing, improvement of situation and circumstance and intrinsic reactive happiness in response thereto, naturally engenders inward turning futility. Indeed, intrinsic reactive happiness stands perhaps as no less than the prime target of alienated Nihilistic value-destruction against any enticement whatsoever howsoever of involving engagement within the external world at all.

Yet how ubiquitous endures the typical cynical Nihilistic heteronymous perfectionist Luddite scorn, despair and lamentation all bewailing that anything good or pleasant is actually bad and painful because it only brings "affluenza," leaving one perpetually covetous, envious, dissatisfied and wanting more. But one might as well similarly curse the oxygen in the very air we breath, because, likewise, we always need more to keep breathing, and never finally get enough while we live. So, obviously, likewise, the real problem is only in sustaining ongoing progress, simply because the life needs and support of anyone or anything that grows, likewise continue to grow.

And the Nihilism of Zen Behaviorist bio-Utopian cessation, apathetic or ecstatic, quelling or eradication howsoever of desire, met or unmet, is a damn foolish purpose defeating solution. After all, Nihilism is value-destruction, the empty rejection and dearth of exactly that known best to sustain interest and determination and to resists jaded habituation, namely: active meaningful involvement. For it has always been meaningful values that captivate and sustains the human imagination.

Indeed, whereas negative emotions may even tend to be insulating, positive emotions often render us all the more fearful and vulnerable to loss and disappointment. And in truth, perhaps actually thus inspired and so ill-considered and then rationalized is the all too tragic resignation simply to end all striving and submit, conform and go with the flow or howsoever just to retreat inward in search of contentment, never to engage proactively, risk nor even so much as to hope for happiness howsoever from the world outside of the self at all. -Indeed, precisely because of the obviously beneficial evolutionary individually variable responsive motivating trait of intrinsic reactive happiness, of how increased happiness or decreased unhappiness may ever either way howsoever arise as expressive of and responsive and relevant to actual and even ongoing improvement in circumstances or situation and circumstances, again, in a word: progress and even growth in the journey of life rather than any destination, all not despite but because of never achieving any perfect and permanent contentment nor any guarantees against repeated failure and painful frustration otherwise.

Indeed, common causes of suffering especially for autonomous intelligent people, even amid howsoever unnaturally sufficient affluence to negate direct and perilous struggle for survival, relative peace thus making boredom even possible, are loneliness and perhaps even more insidious known cause of depression, is the dull and meaningless futility of suboptimal utilization of labor, also termed subemployment or underemployment defined as howsoever such dismally persistent unsatisfying circumstance, unclear direction, barriers, limited choices and lack of opportunity, as howsoever fails to exercise, stimulate, challenge and fulfill, much less cultivate, the full range and extent of ability and potential, all simply because of whatever available but unwanted personal resources and abilities howsoever in excess of currently insufficient demand.

• Frustrated values that so often drive gifted people so neurotic!

Strategic perspectives upon the quest for happiness include descriptive personal narrative accounts and testimonials as of Nihilistic Zen or Behaviorist bio-Utopian cessation and apathetic bliss attained, that oft times seem quite daft, unappealing and unrealistic to personalities too different to relate, and perhaps rightly so. Also prescriptive often dogmatic particular rules or behaviors to be observed and cleaved to, their chronic failure dismissed as weakness and doubt reviled as faithless. And cutting edge science engages in observational field research upon the behavior of happy people, much as the doings of successful entrepreneurs and others are followed for clues to success, likewise, in hopes of precise procedural duplication. Alas, however, such behavior actually well may be effect rather than cause; hence going through the motions might achieve little better than a frustrating and profitless mockery of contentment unless and except to the extent cause and effect may actually be reversible as some even claim. In truth, even in best application of the wisdom of learning from others, intangibles of unique individual variation in personality and motivation still must be fully taken into account.

In personal income, $75,000 per annum appears to be the point of diminishing returns of subjective well being. Indeed, attaining ones desires does bring tremendous relief. But happiness and fulfillment are so much more. For even far short of Eudemonia denoting happiness in the grandest sense of flourishing in authentic wellbeing most broadly and completely, a most ancient conundrum of hedonism, the most general doctrine of the value and intrinsic good of pleasure to begin with, remains salient today. To wit: Are pleasures events, properties, states, or howsoever some other kind of entity?

For in current thinking, despite all the hoopla, quite frankly, Positive Psychology is somewhat problematical, eclectically recycled and largely uninspired excepting one notable inclusion wherein review of the past has actually born any fruit: indeed, the makeshift application of Utilitarian Calculus to the quest for reproducible external causes, circumstances or stimuli precipitating happiness, that has actually yielded a crude yet salient value calculus, a convergence of the traditional three paths to happiness into the much touted and endearingly succinct happiness formula, being something of a misnomer, dealing not with happiness exactly, but seeking optimization of variable volitional or intentional activity towards vastly underserved true fulfillment, a full life of authentic wall being wherein, taking any motivating emotions as neither mythical endogenous traits of disposition being entirely subjective and Phenomenal and hence howsoever amenable to any sort of stoical character building via dishonest Zen passive Behavioral autosuggestion (that actually only strives for detachment in order to stifle activating motivation), nor merely as situation or wherewithal as applicable to howsoever attainable objective material or economic needs let alone joyless workaholism in pursuit all thereof, but strictly as dynamic individually reactive states variable, authentic happiness in specific being an abnormal side effect resultant only from the dynamic process, more than merely the sum of individual pleasures, but of pleasurable engagement, attachment and value, effort striving in meaningful activity, gratifying enough to do for it's own sake: creativity, curiosity, active intervention necessary in order to observe and extrapolate hidden logic, order, meaning and illumination even amid seeming chaos, and hence all only thus approachable or achievable obliquely and indirectly in leading life.

Robert Ingersoll observed: "Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence." But of what? According to George Sheehan: "Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling and enduring and accomplishing." But how so? In the words of Margaret Lee Runbeck: "Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling." Indeed, to quote William H. Sheldon: "Happiness is essentially a state of going somewhere, wholeheartedly, one-directionally, without regret or reservation." Mahatma Gandhi said: "Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony." Indeed, even Ayn Rand concurred: "Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values."

Any good or value is not a property of things or phenomena, but motivation contingent upon no end of circumstances. Value judgment denotes the process of how one desires for oneself that which one recognize as good for oneself, as agreeable and in accord with ones own nature or inclination rather than badly thwarting it. Therefore Altruism and respect, being important aspects of friendship, is to desire for the other, all that they themselves desire for themselves, likewise recognized individually as good for them. Breaking away from dull boring routine, involving engagement, focus and concentration along a learning curve of skills of capability matched to challenge, accrues growth towards clear goals ever put forth best guided by ongoing and timely feedback.

The happiness formula of Positive Psychology:

passion + reason = fun constructive action

pleasure + engagement + meaning = gratification

where ongoing fulfillment of desire

and then renewal of appetite

is the measure of vitality and authentic happiness

But because, even for volitional or intentional activity, time as signified by the letter: 't' and as applicable in reference to duration of events and their frequency, is also a factor, and indeed as lasting happiness is distinguished from transitory pleasure or joy, a more precise formulation might be:

(pleasure + engagement + meaning) ÷ t = gratification over time = fulfillment

Yes, pleasure, engagement and meaning over time, yields gratification over time, which is indeed one plausible measure of fulfillment. However, the resource of time, wo/man-hours, remains finite to any single individual, and even the most authentic happiness must then be delegated, shared, and if the old proverb be true, doubled and redoubled! Nevertheless, for any individual, active intrinsic happiness may ever reach saturation and the best moment for savoring the fruit of satisfying endeavor.

In other words, only whatever artifice if need be, of simultaneous ongoing (pleasure + engagement + meaning) can allow for the happiness of sustainable gratification in order to produce and sustain fulfillment.

Silly misunderstanding of the happiness formula has arisen because the law of diminishing and negative returns inevitably applies. Thus, as must be expected, increase of any one resource or value may decline in additional benefit or productivity, even eventually going negative and detrimental, unless the other necessary resources or values also increase at all proportionally. -Particularly with time and effort, excess whereof expended, resulting in fatigue and discontent, unless, just perhaps, the level of fulfillment increases proportionally.

And in case clarification is necessary, yes: the word 'meaning' here is employed not in the simple linguistic signification of denotation, but distinctly in any deeper sense.

• Meaning of values: THE THIRD FUNDAMENTAL as relates to boredom

• Is there a happiness formula?

“Every living organism is fulfilled when it follows the right path for its own nature.”

― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.”

— Bob Dylan

In the words of Amelia E. Barr: “We have been told, for centuries, to watch for opportunities, and to strike while the iron is hot. Very good; but I think better of Oliver Cromwell’s amendment — “make the iron hot by striking it.”” Indeed, the recommendation for persistence is ever impassioned, but persistence at what, and why?

Oscar Wilde declared: “Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.” Indeed, is there then a testable hypothesis with conditions of refutation? And just what are these vaunted conditions of success? Precisely how?

In one attempt at a novel and innovative answer, sally forth upon the FoolQuest.com path to adventure!

it might often appear that only some special people ever seem to thrive, innovate, succeed and find fulfillment. But what would make such rare individuals so very different? Indeed, are any of us truly all so different from one another after all? One possible account for outstanding success, remains simply luck and opportunity, and then of course simply not to just fuck it all up! Other obvious answers include either the resources of privilege or else whatever rare and unusual great talent and capability if not, indeed, necessarily both together! And leave us not forget: rugged self-made self-reliance. All bringing to mind the famous words if Eudora Welty: “If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?”

And then there remains the most cynical assessment amounting to resignation that the game is rigged in favor of what amounts to ubiquitous cronyism: whatever indispensable subordinate toadying sycophantic exclusive social climbing until at last connection to the money and privilege of our betters, the great and the good, elite domineering bullies exploiting the rest of us with such utter impunity. In short, that our rightful happiness is perfidiously stolen! Be all the above as it may, one consistent Empirical observation endures, to wit, of how social support remains a significant predicator of success. For to quote John Donne, “no man is an island,” and the truly self-made success, in the biting witticism of William Allen Butler, self-trained, self-willed, self-satisfied, all thereby so devoutly worshiping their Creator, as to be expected, might not serve as the most realistically imitable rôle model.

And yet the masses, each of us once again abandoned to to ones own devices, will ever covet any whatever purported secret knowledge and key to life, however specious and lonely. All therefore the yearning for all trappings of success is routinely exploited in standard marketing practices traditionally entailing often fraudulent claims of foolproof infallible expertise, certainty and the authoritative glowing success of lifestyle gurus. Thus, such conventions of time tested dubious marketing are such old hat, effectively ruling out honest innovation, because in truth, risk can never be eliminated, only managed.

Perhaps any path night be discovered via imaginative yet hardnosed Reverse Planning from best current understanding of all we truly yearn for, but without all of the vexation we have been given to believe that we must all endure. Truly, few factors enhance productivity more than happiness.

Woody Allen said that “Eighty percent of success is showing up." But show up where? -Not to mention: when, how, and most certainly: For what and why? To quote Pablo Picasso: “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” Or more precisely, to quote Benjamin Disraeli: “Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.”

• Beware pipdreaming, roadblock to success

• The Road to Success - with commentary

“If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.” — John D. Rockefeller,

'• Why geniuses don't have jobs' by Dave Logan

Indeed, genius is so often squandered in the workplace. And yet, employment sometimes affords a measure of security and stability, but neither always nor for everyone. There are many variables. And alas, to do what you love, the common dilemma of unsatisfactory alternatives is either striving in career development, however torturously and gradually to steer ever more towards your bliss and away from whatever sore travail of unwanted drudgery, or else simply to work for money in order to fund cultivation of what you love on your own free time.

• Why Finding The Perfect Career Is So Hard

Ill prepared, narrowing focus prematurely for wont of resources,

when instead, your net must be cast wider

• Pitfalls of doing what you love

Don't make of it an exhausting freelance job you'll only hate!

Instead, if only you can enjoy building a business...

"The Myth that if You Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow [is] one of those deceptive half truths that often leads to humiliation. [Only] if you’re dedicated, disciplined, and smart, and willing to make short-term sacrifices for long term gains, AND you fundamentally understand how money is made (i.e. and the ins and outs of successful business models and the business models of your competitors), then there’s a good probability that, if you’re selective about what you do, you can turn your passion into a money making venture. [Moreover] if your business doesn’t run without you, then you don’t own a business. You own a job." So, are you at all passionate about business in its own right, and is there any overlap between your passion and any known viable business model? First, research.

Hence: 5 Career Questions To Ask Yourself

Instead Of, “What’s My Passion?”

• The Top 10 Things People Want In Life
But Can’t Seem To Get - - “I can't get no...”

Happiness requires steady progress towards valued goals ever put forth. For success beyond sheer arbitrary futility can only denote the progressive realization of howsoever worthy dreams, howsoever admirable and meaningful goals ever put forth and objectives that one can conceivably ever be either successful or unsuccessful in achieving even by sheer trial and error. And it often can be argued that uncaring complacency, inactive dormancy and exhausting dispirited over zealousness are each and all far deadlier to eventual success than any past or current failures alone and in of themselves.

Indeed, the happiness formula, however misnomered, may also readily be applied to relationships and social life.

Alas: social success ≠ fulfillment. Sublimation leaves the voids unfilled. There must be more at stake than the lonely boredom of sheer pointless and utterly irrelevant inclusion! For what value are either relationships or social life, joyless and sans savor or gratification, detached, meaningless and futile?

Certainly, intimidation and anxious uncertainty hold people back from the pursuit of happiness demanding any sense of power at all over ones own situation and circumstances. Indeed, happy and even successful people tend to be highly active, motivated in doing what they love, fun and engaging activities known to increase happiness tend to involve investment of energy in anything exiting, novel, social, better still: close, and even meaningful.

Personal involvement is best cultivated by a good match between skills and challenges, in whatever median falling between overqualified boredom and under-qualified fr

lustration. But involving engagement manifests not only privately and individually, but also as to render social interaction lively and fulfilling. And in any culture of meaningful involvement, there are five recommended steps to repeat in a fulfilling cycle of engagement:

1. Thank others in order to build recognition and appreciation.
2. Invite others in order to demonstrate intentions eliciting commitments.
3. Ask critical questions in order to draw attention and long-term focus.
4. Get feedback from activities in order to further engage associates.
5. Share assessments and open dialogue.

Ponder then, what manner of empowering close social interaction or relationship involves investment of tangible reciprocal support in high activity such as pleasurably engages novel excitement, meaningfully?

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