Hello :)
I haven't posted anything for over a year... It's been a strange period of my life when a lot of changes happened. Although, I'll write about it next time :)
Based on last year's adventures and experience, I think the best formula for happiness is satisfaction divided by expectations. Let me explain why :)
Happiness - it's undeniable that everyone desires to be happy and looks for happiness. It's also not false to say that only few people are truly happy. This is one of the biggest mysteries of human life. We all desire to be happy, but throughout the history of humankind no one really invented a formula how to achieve it.
Satisfaction - word comes from Latin - satis = enough; and facere = to do, to perform;
Everyone when satisfied is more or less happy. We are satisfied in general of our performance in different aspects of life (work, family, personal goals, etc.). Obviously different people are satisfied because of different reasons, but in general it's about good performance of ours.
Expectations - here is our biggest enemy of happiness and it's not our fault. In Western civilization from the day one we are born into the world of expectations. Parents have expectations towards the baby, then the kid has also expectations about his parents. The world is expecting from us to succeed; and we expect from the world so many things. We constantly live in a closed bubble of expectations.
Take into consideration just one day of your life. You expect to have a lot of stuff to do at work/school; and also it is expected that you perform well, because your manager/teacher has some expectations of you. We have expectations of our partners, parents, friends, future, but even of small things like the taste of food in a recommended restaurant.
It kills everything and we almost never can be positively surprised. No joy, no adventure, just life full of expectations and subsequently disappointments.
So, how to apply this formula for happiness. We cannot do much about satisfactions - we are satisfied or not, we cannot influence it. But we can work on our expectations.
Don't expect too much of life, people, future, etc.
Start working on small expectations and move towards big life expectations. It's feasible to change, to limit our expectations.
And one more thing - while working on your expectations, don't expect any results. They will happen, but you don't change one expectation for another one. Think of it as an adventure.
You know what they say about love - it happens iin the least expected moment :)
Giving up expectations doesn't mean to give up hope nor dreams. Our dreams and hope give us some purpose of life. It's our healthy goal that we pursue.
Last thing - "0 expectations" in my opinion is almost impossible - then we are either saint, dead or we don't give a damn about absolutely anything :)
I wish you (and myself) best of luck in the journey of reducing expectations. Expect another post from me soon ;)