In my early twenties, when most of my friends were focused on career ladders and weekend plans, I found myself drawn to a different pursuit: happiness. Not the fleeting kind that comes with a night out or a new purchase, but something deeper and more permanent. I began collecting self-help books, their spines eventually forming a colorful mosaic on my bookshelf—each one promising some variation of enlightenment or contentment.
Buddhism caught my attention especially. The concepts of mindfulness and detachment from desire seemed logical, even scientific in their approach to human suffering. I downloaded guided meditations and affirmations, faithfully listening while lying in bed or on the couch, trying to train my mind toward tranquility. I contemplated concepts bigger than myself—interconnectedness, impermanence, the nature of consciousness—convinced that understanding these would somehow transform my everyday experience.
Each new practice or insight would bring a temporary lift, a brief period where I’d think maybe I was getting closer to that sustained state of happiness I imagined others had achieved. But inevitably, the effect would fade, leaving me wondering what I was missing.
The pattern became predictable. I’d discover a new approach—perhaps a breathing technique or a philosophical framework—and for days or even weeks, I’d feel I was making progress. My mind would feel clearer, my outlook brighter. “This is it,” I’d think. “This is the key I’ve been missing.”
Then, without warning, the magic would dissipate. The meditation that once left me feeling enlightened would become just another item on my to-do list. The profound insights would fade into intellectual curiosities rather than lived experiences. And I’d find myself back at square one, browsing bookstores or spiritual websites for the next solution.
What confused me most were the moments of genuine happiness that seemed to arrive without invitation. Walking home one evening as the setting sun painted the sky in impossible colors, I felt a surge of contentment so complete it almost brought tears to my eyes. Or laughing uncontrollably with an old friend over something ridiculous—in that moment, happiness wasn’t something I was pursuing but something I was simply experiencing.
These instances planted a seed of doubt. If happiness could arrive unbidden when I wasn’t actively seeking it, was I fundamentally misunderstanding what happiness was? If my deliberate efforts consistently failed while spontaneous moments succeeded, was I approaching this all wrong?
The question kept returning: what if happiness isn’t something to achieve but something else entirely?
The breakthrough came on an ordinary Monday night. I was lying in bed after what had been a particularly stressful day—a long and overwhelming work meeting followed by having to deal with a tradesperson in my home, an interaction I always found awkward and draining. As I lay there, I noticed how much better I felt compared to earlier in the day. The tension that had been building in my shoulders, the flutter of anxiety in my stomach—they were gone.
In that moment of contrast, something clicked. I felt better now simply because the sources of stress had passed. There was nothing special I was doing to feel good—I hadn’t meditated or practiced gratitude or recited affirmations. The absence of the stressors had simply allowed my natural state of wellbeing to return, like a spring that rebounds once pressure is removed.
It was so obvious that I almost laughed out loud. What I had been calling “happiness” all this time wasn’t some special state I needed to achieve. It was simply how I felt when I wasn’t being weighed down by stress and anxiety.
I remembered a line from Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning,” one of the few books that had left a lasting impression on me: “Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.” At the time, I’d highlighted that passage but hadn’t truly understood it. Now, its wisdom hit me with full force. Happiness wasn’t something to chase after; it was what remained when I stopped chasing.
Looking back at those moments when happiness had arrived unexpectedly—watching the sunset, laughing with a friend—I realized they shared one common element: in each instance, my mind had been temporarily free from its usual anxieties and stresses. There were no deadlines looming in my consciousness, no relationship issues needing resolution, no existential questions demanding answers. There was just a lightness of being.
The more I reflected, the clearer it became. What I had been calling “happiness” was actually just mental lightness—the absence of the worries and stresses that normally cluttered my thinking. Those rare moments of peace weren’t the presence of some mystical state called happiness; they were simply brief windows when my mind wasn’t weighed down.
This realization was both obvious and revolutionary. If happiness was actually the absence of mental burden rather than something to attain, then my entire approach had been backward. I had been adding—more practices, more knowledge, more effort—when I should have been subtracting.
With this new understanding, I decided to experiment. Instead of adding another meditation practice or reading another self-improvement book, I would focus on removing sources of stress and anxiety from my life.
I started small. I noticed that checking social media first thing in the morning often set a tone of tension for my entire day. So, I established a boundary: no social media until after breakfast. This simple change created a pocket of mental space each morning that felt surprisingly luxurious.
The most significant change came when I made the decision to live by myself rather than with friends. For a few years, I’d enjoyed the camaraderie and cost-sharing benefits of having housemates, but there was an undeniable toll. Tensions would periodically boil over as our different personalities, schedules, and cleanliness standards clashed. Small irritations—dishes left in the sink, competing preferences for temperature settings, the subtle negotiation of shared spaces—created a constant low-grade anxiety I hadn’t fully acknowledged.
Moving into my own place wasn’t financially easy, but the effect on my mental state was immediate and profound. The relief of not walking on eggshells, of not having to negotiate every small decision, of having complete autonomy over my living environment—it was like putting down a heavy backpack I’d grown so accustomed to carrying that I’d forgotten it was there. Living alone brought its own challenges, of course—occasional loneliness, sole responsibility for household tasks—but these were cleaner, simpler problems without the complicated interpersonal dynamics.
What struck me most wasn’t that these changes made me “happier” in the traditional sense. Rather, they removed obstructions that had been preventing my natural state of well-being from emerging. Without the low-grade tension of social friction at home, a complicated web of roommate expectations, or the constant small compromises of shared living, my mind naturally settled into a more restful state.
Unlike my previous happiness pursuits, these changes stuck. I wasn’t trying to maintain a practice or hold onto an insight—I was simply removing obstacles, and the resulting sense of lightness maintained itself. When I did feel stress return, it served as valuable information rather than a failure: something in my life needed attention.
I began asking different questions. Instead of “How can I become happier?” I asked, “What’s weighing me down right now?” Instead of seeking peak experiences, I looked for pain points that could be addressed. It was problem-solving rather than happiness-seeking.
This approach felt sustainable in a way that my previous efforts never had. There was no striving for an ideal state, no disappointment when the high wore off. There was just the ongoing process of identifying and removing barriers to that natural lightness of being.
As this philosophy took root in my life, I realized that the most profound sources of mental heaviness weren’t the daily irritations but deeper anxieties: career paths that didn’t align with my values, relationships that drained rather than nourished me, unaddressed health concerns that whispered worries in the background of my thoughts.
When I applied this “subtraction mindset” to these weightier matters, the process was neither quick nor easy. I left my job and began working for myself. I made the switch to solo living mentioned above, I went to see a doctor about issues I had ignored for years. Yet in each case, removing these major sources of internal conflict created space for that natural ease of being that I had been chasing all along.
In these moments, I found myself reconnecting with some of the Eastern philosophies I’d initially misunderstood. The Buddhist concept of non-attachment wasn’t about becoming emotionally aloof; it was about not adding unnecessary suffering to inevitable pain. The Taoist principle of wu-wei (non-forcing) wasn’t about passivity but about removing obstacles to natural flow. These traditions had been pointing to this truth all along, but I had been too busy trying to “achieve enlightenment” to truly understand their message.
What became increasingly clear was that I wasn’t working toward a perfect, stress-free existence—such a life doesn’t exist. Rather, I was developing a different relationship with the inevitable challenges of being human. Instead of adding the stress of “I should be happier” to my existing stresses, I was simply dealing with what was actually in front of me.
This wasn’t resignation or settling for less. It was recognizing that my natural state—when not obstructed by avoidable anxieties and burdens—was already sufficient. The lightness I experienced wasn’t happiness as I had imagined it, with its connotations of constant joy and excitement. It was something quieter but more sustainable: a basic okayness, a fundamental peace with being alive in this moment, exactly as it is.
So what was this “something way more important” I discovered instead of happiness? It was the realization that peace of mind is not achieved but revealed.
All those years of seeking happiness, I had been operating under a fundamental misconception. I thought happiness was something to be constructed, built piece by piece through practices and insights. In reality, our natural state is already one of contentment. The problem isn’t that we haven’t found happiness; it’s that we’ve buried it under layers of unnecessary mental burdens.
This shift in perspective changes everything. Instead of asking “How can I become happy?” we can ask “What’s in the way of the peace that’s already there?” Instead of constantly trying to add positive experiences, we can focus on removing the negative ones that aren’t serving us. The first approach leads to an exhausting treadmill of pursuit; the second leads to a gradual liberation.
This isn’t to say that life becomes perfect. Pain, loss, and difficulty remain inevitable parts of the human experience. But there’s a profound difference between the unavoidable suffering that comes with being alive and the optional suffering we add through rumination, resistance, and unnecessary complication. By focusing on eliminating the optional suffering, we create space to meet the unavoidable kind with more presence and grace.
In the end, my failed pursuit of happiness wasn’t a failure at all. It was a necessary journey to discover that what I was seeking wasn’t something to be found but something to be uncovered. Like the sculptor who claims to simply remove the excess stone to reveal the statue that was always there, I learned that our task isn’t to manufacture happiness but to chip away at what obscures it.
The lightness of being that results isn’t the ecstatic happiness sold by self-help books. It’s subtler, steadier, and infinitely more valuable: the quiet recognition that beneath all our striving and struggling, we are already home.
