Nesse on Happiness

Just adjust your goals to what is
possible, be satisfied with who you are and what you have,
and happiness will be yours. It is wise advice with an
increasingly strong scientific foundation. Occasionally
someone is able to follow it, usually with good effect. Some
follow the established middle way of Buddhism, striving to
transcend the tangles of desire that are seen as the origins of
all suffering. However, most of us muddle on, trying to do
things in life, some feasible, some grand, others mundane,
some successful, others sources of constant frustration, and
some that lead to abject failure after huge efforts. The
effects of discrete successes or failures on mood are strong,
but not as strong as efforts that are steadily productive or
increasingly ineffective despite great effort. It is important
to recognize that only some of the goals in question are tangible,
such as getting a job or buying a house. Success for
many other goals, such as winning the golf tournament,
being chosen as the beauty queen or the valedictorian, or
having higher social status than others in a group, depends
on winning a zero-sum game with escalating competition.
Other goals that influence our states of mind are more elusive
yet. How may people spend their lives trying to get their
mothers finally to love them, to get a spouse to want to have
sex again, to stop a child from taking drugs, or trying to
control their own habits? In such desperate enterprises that
cannot be given up are the seeds of intense dissatisfaction
that often precede serious depression.