In Hermann Hesse’s novel Siddhartha, a wealthy Indian Brahmin sets out to find enlightenment. What he discovers reveals much of the knowledge agreed upon by modern psychologists such as Carl Rogers and Alfred Adler. Loneliness is a subjective concept; when you expand your idea of what you are as a person and what you are a part of as a person, you become less lonely. This is not an insight which is easy to truly learn, and many people have difficulty finding togetherness and joy in their lives.
Carl Rogers emphasizes in his work the extent to which humans are a socially connected species. it is the subjective feeling of trying to help others, due to our inherent connectedness as a social creature. This is what Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson emphasizes in taking on responsibility, that people bite off what they can chew. Some people find meaning in having a family; some people find meaning in a cause and in religion. But, it is learning to love to dance, in the words of Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler, that make life enjoyable, and by dance he means to treat the things we do as if it were something fun like dancing, or like a game. We can find joy and meaning in all manner of things.
Struggle gives meaning to life. The more people continue to work on self-care like getting proper sleep, eating right, exercising, and doing things they find to have meaning, in whatever their subjective sense of it is, people will find their anxiety to lessen, with prospects for a brighter future.
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky culminates with saying the best cure for life is the living of life itself. “Just give yourself directly to life, without reasoning; don’t worry—it will carry you straight to shore and set you on your feet… And then you’ll get to like it. All you need Is air now, air, air!”
Here are ten steps you can take to help to improve your own happiness in a time of distancing and relative isolation. People need to do things to make themselves happy within, to not be dependent on another for happiness; external happiness puts people at the mercy of others.
- Make a decision. People need to trust their own instincts to take on tasks and follow through on them.
- Fall down, get up. Life is full of challenges. We have to push through adversity in order to achieve satisfying goals.
- Decide to evolve, learn from mistakes. Always adapt to the challenge at hand. Be willing to look at your own shortcomings and try to improve next time.
- Adjust – to circumstances, to others, to life. What makes relationships work is adjusting to one another and having flexibility.
- Let go. Let go of things that make you miserable. Don’t go through life angry and vindictive because it will wear you down. Let go for your own sanity.
- Inquire. Ask questions about people, surroundings, ideas, behavior. Trust your own sense of curiosity and continue to inquire about things that interest you.
- Breathe. Calm down. Take time to evaluate situations so that you can respond appropriately.
- Create. Try new things. If they don’t work, no problem, you can try something else.
- Laugh. Laugh at situations, laugh at yourself. One must walk a balance between taking the tasks of life seriously but also learning to laugh at things along the way.
- Live. Live life. The cure for life is living life.