Quotes & Sayings About Trying To Find Happiness

I think one of the keys to happiness is accepting that I am never going to be perfectly happy. Life is uncomfortable. So I might as well get busy loving the people around me. I'm going to stop trying so hard to decide whether they are the "right people" for me and just take deep breaths and love my neighbors. I'm going to take care of my friends. I'm going to find peace in the 'burbs. I'm going to quit chasing happiness long enough to notice it smiling right at me. — Glennon Doyle Melton

It is by being fully involved with every detail of our lives, whether good or bad, that we find happiness, not by trying to look for it directly. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

I'm not denying the importance of achieving one's goals, maintaining one's health, or keeping one's children clothed and fed - but most of us spend our time seeking happiness and security without acknowledging the underlying purpose of our search. Each of us is looking for a path back to the present: We are trying to find good enough reasons to be satisfied now. — Sam Harris

The worst part of success is trying to find someone who is happy for you. — Bette Midler

The search for happiness is one of the few actions in which human beings absolutely agree upon, though they may not agree on what it implies or how to find it. This quest for satisfaction emphasizes the creation of physical and mental boundaries that we would like to "privatize" for our welfare and security, trying to keep them unchanged in appearance and actions. That quest is ultimately insatiable and eventually results in more suffering and dissatisfaction — Ivan Figueroa-Otero

The living are always trying to find the shortcuts to happiness in life. But look what happens when someone achieves premature success: they bloom too early and spend the rest of their lives dying....Success without struggle warps a person. — Susan Wells Bennett

Most of us spend our time seeking happiness and security without acknowledging the underlying purpose of our search. Each of us is looking for a path back to the present: We are trying to find good enough reasons to be satisfied now. Acknowledging that this is the structure of the game we are playing allows us to play it differently. How we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the character of our experience and, therefore, the quality of our lives. Mystics and contemplatives have made this claim for ages - but a growing body of scientific research now bears it out. — Sam Harris

...A huge "army" of immature guys with blinders over their eyes, looking for UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, are going nowhere. Such men are all ending up to be eternal dating losers, because they are simply wasting huge amounts of effort, trying hard and hoping to find something that does not exist on the planet.
To achieve the goal of personal happiness, we have to be honest with ourselves first of all. We need to be brave enough and smart enough to look into the mirror at our true selves, without our comfortable masks of lies or hypocrisy.

LET'S FACE IT:
There are always reasons why we feel love for another person; we don't love someone for no reason at all. We love them for the qualities they possess, which we admire; for those amazing, bright emotions they evoke from within ourselves; for the love and care that we so acceptingly receive from them; and for what good feelings we experience being around them, etc.

Be HONEST with yourself! — Sahara Sanders

Where do we find happiness? We pursue it, search for it, kill ourselves trying to find it, and all the time it's just here ... It comes just when we've stopped expecting anything, stopped hoping, stopped being afraid. — Irene Nemirovsky

Death just comes, not happiness. Because when you're trying to find happiness, you're trying to navigate a very, very murky minefield of distractions, of disappointments, of deceptions. That's why you have to work on happiness. — Ian K. Smith

It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go - let it die away - go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow - and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. — C.S. Lewis

I guess what I'm trying to say is, you just can't tell who you're going to end up with. You might spend your whole life dreaming about one type of person, only to find happiness with somebody completely different. Someone you figured you had nothing in common with just might turn out to be your dream guy. And you know he's your dream guy because you become a better person. He brings out all these great things in you that you never knew or believed were there. And if you're really lucky you do the same for him. It makes it even more incredible that people find each other, considering most of them are looking in the wrong places to begin with. — Kristin Walker

Know that God has a plan for your life. Turn your life over to him every day. Stop looking outside yourself for validation and approval-you're letting other people define your happiness. Instead of trying so hard to manipulate life, take care of yourself on the inside. Then all those other attributes you're so desperately seeking will find you eventually. — Trisha Yearwood

You can't find happiness outside yourself, Calder."
I shook my head. "You sound like a fortune cookie."
"It's still true. Everyone's always trying to do it, y'know. They try to get with the right people, hook up with the right guy, join the right club - without ever asking what 'right' is."
"And this is somehow supposed to apply to me? I'm not some identity-confused sophomore, Lily. If you haven't been listening, I turn into a thieving, murdering fish. — Anne Greenwood Brown

The reality is that fulfillment, success and all of these good things comes from trying to help those that we care about to achieve those things. How can I help somebody I care about find the job they love? How can I help somebody I care about find happiness in their work? And when we commit to service it actually biologically and anthropologically is more likely to lead to our own success and our own happiness. — Simon Sinek

Happiness is like soap bubbles. It comes in small fragile doses, transparent and gentle, that you can't catch, or hold forever. You have to learn to recognize the moment, to embrace it and when the bubble pops and the moment is over, to choose whether to remember it or not.
The miserable people are the ones who think that happiness is a permanent state. They waste half of their lives trying to find it, and the other half being disappointed that they can't, while there are many little soap bubbles floating in the air around them, but they don't ever see them. — Limor Moyal

People make themselves unhappy by desiring and praising only one thing, by becoming too one-sided in trying to find contentment. If we were just in harmony with ourselves we would enjoy the things of this world much more. But when we have an inordinate amount of desires and aspirations, we only listen to them, we are incapable of understanding the essential innocence of things outside ourselves. Unfortunately, we often term those things important that are the objects of our emotions, and those things that have no relation to our desires are called unimportant; however, many times it is exactly the opposite. — Adalbert Stifter

That was life, wasn't it? You spend so much of it trying to find happiness, and then when you get some, you worry every day something is going to take it away. — Victor Gischler

Going back into the negative past to find happiness is like trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear — Sydney Banks

There is nothing novel about trying to become happy. And one can become happy, within certain limits, without any recourse to the practice of meditation. But conventional sources of happiness are unreliable, being dependent upon changing conditions. It is difficult to raise a happy family, to keep yourself and those you love healthy, to acquire wealth and find creative and fulfilling ways to enjoy it, to form deep friendships, to contribute to society in ways that are emotionally rewarding, to perfect a wide variety of artistic, athletic, and intellectual skills - and to keep the machinery of happiness running day after day. There is nothing wrong with being fulfilled in all these ways - except for the fact that, if you pay close attention, you will see that there is still something wrong with it. These forms of happiness aren't good enough. Our feelings of fulfillment do not last. And the stress of life continues. — Sam Harris

We're just trying to find happiness in the bodies and minds we were given, like everyone else. — Ellen DeGeneres

The key to happiness? Find someone who would rather you be happy than themselves and then you treat them the same way. That way, no matter what, you are both trying to insure the OTHER person's happiness and in turn, yours is undeniable. — Sharon Swan

Were all trying to find meaning to make sense of our realities; in search of happiness within,
Without realising our happiness within; is the only reality that gives life a meaning. — Nikki Rowe

If it's just a matter of looking, I've looked! I've looked for happiness at home. I've looked all over this neighbourhood for happiness ... Someday, I'll look all over this country for happiness ... And, someday, I'll look all around the world for happiness, but I'll probably never find it ... Then, after I've looked all over the world, I'll return home."
"And when you return home, you'll find the very happiness that was there all along! Is that what you're trying to say?"
"No, but maybe I'll find that stupid little pink bracelet I lost yesterday! — Charles M. Schulz

To me, then, true criticism consists in trying to find out the intrinsic worth of the thing itself, and not in attributing a quality to that thing. You attribute a quality to an environment, to an experience, only when you want to derive something from it, when you want to gain or to have power or happiness. Now this destroys true criticism. Your desire is perverted through attributing values, and therefore you cannot see clearly. Instead of trying to see the flower in its original and entire beauty, you look at it through coloured glasses, and therefore you can never see it as it is. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Sometimes it all becomes too much. Your body and mind will just give way. Part of you may want to blissfully fade into nothing, but you never do. After a while all the memories and emotions make you shut down but never fully disappear - it's safer for you this way, to be excluded. It's a time to be alone, to heal, and to find yourself. It doesn't mean you've given up or stopped trying; it just means you know what's best for you.
Breathing is medicine. I forgot how to breathe, but I'm learning all over again. — Mandi Lynn

Robust health and optimism produce happiness. The power of a sunny soul to transform the most trying situations in life is beyond all power to compute. The world loves the sunny soul, the man who carries his holidays in his eye and his sunshine with him. The determination to be kind and helpful to every one, to be cheerful, no matter what comes to us, is a great happiness producer. When a man does not find repose in himself it is vain for him to seek it elsewhere. — Orison Swett Marden

They say that people teach what they need to learn. By adopting the role of happiness teacher, if only for myself, I was trying to find the method to conquer my particular faults and limitations. — Gretchen Rubin

I say all the time that if you really want to feel alive, it's not through striving for yourself. If you really want to feel alive, it's not through trying to get more things or get more success or climbing a corporate ladder or getting to the top. Because, once you get there, you realize that you don't really find happiness in that. If you want to feel alive and if you want to feel peace and happiness, give your life away. Do something that is outside of yourself for someone else. I think that's the way to truly feel alive. — Natalie Grant

We're all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale, most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly, Human happiness does not seem to be included in the design of creation. it is only we, with our capacity to love that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even try to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more — Woody Allen

Instead of asking ourselves, 'How can I find security and happiness?' we could ask ourselves, 'Can I touch the center of my pain? Can I sit with suffering, both yours and mine, without trying to make it go away? Can I stay present to the ache of loss or disgrace-disapp ointment in all its many forms-and let it open me?' This is the trick. — Pema Chodron

Satisficing is one of the foundations of productive human behavior; it prevails when we don't waste time on decisions that don't matter, or more accurately, when we don't waste time trying to find improvements that are not going to make a significant difference in our happiness or satisfaction. — Daniel J. Levitin

Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you. — LeighAnn Kopans

Human happiness does not seem to have been included in the design of creation. It is only we with our capacity to love that fives meaning to the indifferent universe, and yet most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even to find joy from simple things. — Woody Allen

We ate in the dining room alcove looking over the hillside and the silent dark rooftops of my neighbors. The lights of the valley glittered below.
We were both tired but we smiled at each other, and I felt a kind of happiness growing inside me. It was good to look across the table and see someone, and I thought maybe it was time to start thinking about that again - about finding someone. Sharing my life maybe.
Or maybe just getting more friends around. Except when I pictured the friends I wanted around, they all looked like Dan, and when I thought about trying to find someone to share my life with, he too looked a little too much like Dan for comfort. — Josh Lanyon

Seeking validation, inner peace, and happiness outside of yourself is like trying to find a bus to take you home when you're already at home. The only source of inner peace and happiness exists within you already. — Derek Doepker

When you're calling for God,
whom you are calling?
When you trying to find the God
whom you're looking for?
When you're thinking about God
whom you're thinking of?
When you're praying for God,
for whom are you praying for?
You're calling for your true self.
You're looking for your true self.
You're thinking of your true self
and you're praying to you to reveal your true self.
You're the truth, you're the God, you're eternal. — Debasish Mridha

I no longer pursue happiness, for it alludes me in every occasion. It is as if I'm trying to find something that is invisible, and sometimes I can't help to wonder if I'm the only one who it is oblivious to — Dave Guerrero

The problem with trying to find your happiness through avoidance is the nature of reality. Reality simply does not allow us to evade unwanted experiences. Sure, we might be able to escape a few {...] but the evasive life often comes at a cost, like having to live your life in terror. Even if we can successfully ward off some terrifying experiences, we can not advert them all. Particularly, the most unpleasant ones: sickness, old age and death. If our strategy has been to flea unpleasant circumstances, when they come to meet us - as they surely will - our suffering will be great indeed. — Mark W. Muesse

I lost myself trying to find happiness in things that didn't love me back. — Sarah Addison Allen

While being you and truly sharing what you do will bring happiness to others, you won't find contentment merely trying to keep others happy. — Rasheed Ogunlaru