What Confucius Can Teach You About Living a Happier Life

By 

Henrik Edberg.

“It is better to play than do nothing.”

 

“Men’s natures are alike; it is their habits that separate them.”

“Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.”

About 2500 years ago there lived a man called Confucius. He was Chinese philosopher and thinker and has had a big influence on life and thought systems in countries like China, Korea and Japan for a long, long time. His teachings became the system of philosophy called Confucianism.

Today I’d like to share a few of my favorite happiness tips from Confucius.

What goes around, comes around.

“What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.”

• A very simple rule for how life often works. The Law of Reciprocity is strong in people. How you treat others, they are likely to treat you. So be honest and think about what you do to others and what they are doing to you. And think about how you can change and improve what you do to them.
• The payoff may not be instant though. So let go of your need for instant gratification and continue to act in a way that you feel is right rather than quickly giving up doing positive things just because you didn’t get validation and positive feedback right away.

You have to do to understand.

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”

• This is a key piece of advice. It’s easy to confuse what you read in a book or see happen to someone else as having an idea of how it is to do or experience such a thing for yourself. Sometimes it gives you a good idea of what it is about. Other times it’s quite different than you thought it would be.
• So while books and seeing someone doing something can be useful, the key to really understanding what something is about is to do it yourself. You can argue with yourself or others about an idea for years. Have logical discussions and theories. But until you actually try it for yourself you won’t understand it.

Shoot for something.

“If you shoot for the stars and hit the moon, it’s OK. But you’ve got to shoot for something. A lot of people don’t even shoot.”

• The most important thing is to start and to do. You may fail, you may stumble. And that’s OK. You may not wind up exactly where you wanted to go. And that’s OK too.
• But if you don’t try then nothing will ever get started. You’ll probably just spend days, months and years sitting around waiting for something to happen.

Focus on what you want.

“The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large.”

• What you focus on, you will see in your world. Changing what you think about most of the time can change the world around you radically. Things you never noticed before come into focus. Things you previously spent a lot of time thinking and worrying about seem insignificant and sink into the background of your world.
• And your actions tend to align with your dominant thoughts. So if you replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts then you will probably start to take more positive action in your world and so you world tends to become a better world. This can of course spread outside your own little world since people tend to treat other people as they are being treated. And so a positive, upward spiral of thought and action can grow.

Let go of the past.

“To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.” 

“Things that are done, it is needless to speak about…things that are past, it is needless to blame.”

• People can hold on to things that have happened long, long after they happened. One reason for that is that it inflates the ego. If you have or have had important problems then well, you must be a person of importance. Or so you can tell yourself and others to gain sympathy and attention.
• So you feel a sense of importance by bringing these past things up in your mind and perhaps by discussing or arguing with others about them. This may be seen as normal and something a whole lot of people do. But it is not useful. It is not necessary. You get some pleasure out of it but in the end it always leads to a lot more misery and suffering.
• So ask yourself: “what is in it for me?”. Or: “who cares?”.
• Is it really a lot of value in it for you to be thinking and feeling negatively for perhaps hours each week about things that is already in the past, things you can’t change anyway?
• Now, just saying that you should drop negative stuff that happened to you in the past is easy. Doing it isn’t always that easy. These memories have a tendency to want to cling to you. Or jump out at you once again even though you thought you had moved past them.
• But with time, they can become less and less frequent visitors. Until one day, you may even have forgotten about them altogether.

Delay the impulse and avoid the consequences.

“When anger rises, think of the consequences.”

• No matter if you train your mind, you are still human and in the heat of the moment it’s easy to take less helpful path. In those moments it’s good to look into the future. It is easy to get lost in the anger and act based upon that. But is it worth it? And what may happen if you do?
• When anger rises, take 10 breaths and think about that.

You are here.

“And remember, no matter where you go, there you are.”

• It’s easy to get lost in the past or future. But you aren’t there now. You are right here right now. Most of the moments you spend thinking and feeling about the past or future is simply you being stuck in an unnecessary habit and it is a distraction from what is here in front of you.
• So return to where you are right now by focusing on your breathing for a minute or two. Or by focusing on what is in front of you and around you right now. Then be where you are.

Recognize the simplicity of life.

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”

• The mind loves to think. So it thinks and thinks about things. Making them more and more complex than they ever really were. And so you bog yourself down with too many thoughts and perhaps a lack of action due to things just seeming too complicated and hard.
• Don’t get lost in details and unimportant things. Realize what is most important in your life and discard what you don’t need.
• Then spend more time and energy on the important things in your life. And stop thinking so much and instead take action to gain a better understanding of life and of yourself.

Copyright 2006-2010 Henrik Edberg.