This has made it very clear that, for me, happiness is a fundamentally internal thing. Your outside circumstances (within reason) have only marginal effects on happiness.
I agree with your take on happiness; it is fundamentally a matter of frame of mind.
However, the inputs to one's frame of mind evaluates can have a significant effect on happiness. It depends partly on how your brain was/is wired, and a significant amount on deciding which inputs to take seriously and how to relatively weight them.
I haven't spent a full week at a strength in quiet deep uninterrupted thought, but I probably do over the course of a year or two (approximately, I don't really keep track of time when I'm thinking). Part of this thinking is looking into my frame of mind, seeing how things are wired together based on snap judgments I've made in the past, and seeing if there are places where I am weighting things wrong, or even places where I should just start discarding input entirely. I guess, in a sense, you could say I'm performing back-propagation on my mind. :-)
kids have a way of totally ignoring the bullshit they're supposed to see, and just seeing instead.
My wife is the same way, and it is absolutely wonderful. She's a great source of insight when my frequent introspection runs into a difficult, deep problem. That she does the same sort of mental self-analysis often means she and I have non-overlapping insights about things. It helps me spend less time in a state of confusion.
I agree with your take on happiness; it is fundamentally a matter of frame of mind.
However, the inputs to one's frame of mind evaluates can have a significant effect on happiness. It depends partly on how your brain was/is wired, and a significant amount on deciding which inputs to take seriously and how to relatively weight them.
I haven't spent a full week at a strength in quiet deep uninterrupted thought, but I probably do over the course of a year or two (approximately, I don't really keep track of time when I'm thinking). Part of this thinking is looking into my frame of mind, seeing how things are wired together based on snap judgments I've made in the past, and seeing if there are places where I am weighting things wrong, or even places where I should just start discarding input entirely. I guess, in a sense, you could say I'm performing back-propagation on my mind. :-)
kids have a way of totally ignoring the bullshit they're supposed to see, and just seeing instead.
My wife is the same way, and it is absolutely wonderful. She's a great source of insight when my frequent introspection runs into a difficult, deep problem. That she does the same sort of mental self-analysis often means she and I have non-overlapping insights about things. It helps me spend less time in a state of confusion.
Really good advice overall, though. Kudos.