What makes people happy? Shameless happiness comes from sacrificing your own wishes to please others – not always, but from time to time. Occasionally doing what’s best for others will help to make you happy; it’s another key to shameless happiness.

Pleasing yourself can make you happy. But only up to a point. If you only please yourself, you’ll help to create a dog-eat-dog world that the philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, described as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” According to Albert Ellis, creator of rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), it’s much easier to be happy if you live in a social group or community and help that group to thrive. The alternative is to sit back and whine about conditions rather than rolling up your sleeves and doing what you can to improve them.

You’ll be much happier if you develop your social skills and learn to get along with others especially if you become particularly close and intimate with a few of them. Most of the time you’ll want to do what’s best for you, but you’ll get great enjoyment if, from time to time, you sacrifice your wishes to please others. If you are fair to others, and considerate of their wishes, you’ll find that they often do likewise to you; in this way you can add to your own happiness. By cooperating synergistically with others you can work together to help one another achieve your goals and find shameless happiness.

If you act unethically, trample over the rights of others, and ignore social problems, it’s unlikely that you’ll create the kind of world in which you can live comfortably and happily. Shameless happiness comes to those who get involved in a constructive way with those around them. That’s what makes people happy.



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