Happiness is a Butterfly, but Do Not Pursue It...

Many are unsure as to what happiness entails. They are too busy striving for superficial goals instead of tackling life as it stands. They do not always analyze situations and people they find themselves engaging with.

The key to finding happiness is understanding that it is an ongoing process, not a thing or object to be discovered. Happiness exists in the now. When we wait for happiness we may become repeatedly disappointed.

Writer Nathaniel Hawthorne summed it up best:

"Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."

I advise everyone to take the time to analyze their life and determine if they are living for the now. Ask fundamental questions. Do I like my life? Is everything going as I want it to? Am I satisfied with the past? Do have any meaningful relationships? Am I bitter or miserable? If so, why am I bitter or miserable? Is there anything I can do right now that will please me?

Challenge Yourself to Build Happiness; Write Down Your Life

If you want to take it a step further and really challenge yourself, sit down and write those questions out. Then answer them. Think about your answers. Do the answers make sense? If you sat down and did this again the next day would your answers be similar or different?

If the answers you come up with next time don't seem to match, this could be an indicator that you have not been analyzing yourself or answering your questions truthfully. It could be you haven't made your thoughts consistent with your actions.

This exercise puts you in a position ripe for self-analysis and introspection, which is a key ingredient for a human being who wants to evolve as a person.

Do Not Stagnate: Pursue Life with Passion; Happiness is for Everyone

When we don't pursue life with vigor and passion we easily stagnate (fall apart), and lose hope. Psychologists call this fear existential angst, which is a philosophical, extreme fear of dying.

The way to escape this fear is to realize that your mortality implies you exist, that you have inherent meaning. Without existence there would be no meaning, no such concept as happiness. This is how psychologists get people suffering from existential angst to realize they can actually "be in the world" and immerse themselves in existence as a purely humbling and pleasurable experience.

This is what I hope for all of you: to enjoy life and find happiness in being and existence. I find it easy to remember that life is strange...because if we take life too seriously it pummels us and punishes us. The good life is about finding balance and realizing that mortality doesn't mean anything while you are alive, because when you are dead, you are not around to ponder anything anymore anyway.

Find happiness by enjoying life. Reproduce this joy in every action. Love yourself enough to face challenges, depression, darkness, and death. Life is beautiful. Happiness is right there in front of you, even when life sucks.

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

---Virginia Wolf

"If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present."

---Lao Tzu

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Sterlin Luxan is a visionary thinker, cryptocurrency junkie, connoisseur of psychology, an MDMA high priest, and the Mr. Rogers of Anarchism. He writes for bitcoin.com, runs a consultancy business in the crypto space, and is a public figure. He created the doctrine of relational anarchism and contributes to many causes in the thriving liberty ecosystem.