“Everyone wants to live a happy life, but we are dull at perceiving exactly what it is that makes life happy.” – Seneca

Happiness. We are all seeking it in our own way. But are we asking the right questions? A quick search for book about happiness would indicate that while we all want to be happy, most of us have no idea where to start.

If we were to design a basic pattern of happiness what would it include? For our purposes, we will define happiness as a state of well being, contentment, and a generally decent quality of life.

If we look at our current quality of life, most of us will have to concede that it is in fact fairly decent, possibly even downright good. This is especially true when we compare our situation to that of other humans around the globe. In that, most of us have satisfied the requirement for happiness.

But are we content? In most case, we are not. We lose perspective of just how good our lives are and get trapped in the wanting. We get pulled into the idea that somehow external things, outside of our own control hold the keys to our being happy. We could and should instead choose contentment.

For some of us, this is going to be harder than others. We might not be where we actually need to be in order to feel contentment, or perhaps we are simply not ready to change our frame of mind. But we can look at where we are and ask ourselves, what would we need in order to feel content?

And then plan our lives out around the answer to this question.

virtus fortis vocat