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The Happiness Of Pursuit [Book]

    The Happiness of Pursuit by Chris Guillebeau
    By: Chris Guillebeau

    Book Overview: In The Happiness of Pursuit, Chris Guillebeau draws on interviews with hundreds of questers, revealing their secret motivations, their selection criteria, the role played by friends and family, their tricks for solving logistics, and the importance of documentation. Equally fascinating is Chris’s examination of questing’s other side. What happens after the summit is climbed, the painting hung, the endurance record broken, the at-risk community saved? A book that challenges each of us to take control—to make our lives be about something while at the same time remaining clear-eyed about the commitment—The Happiness of Pursuit will inspire readers of every age and aspiration. It’s a playbook for making your life count.

    Post(s) Inspired By This Book:

    26 Quotes ➜
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      “Happy is the person who can improve others, not only when present, but even when in their thoughts!”

      Seneca, Moral Letters, via The Daily Stoic (Page 79)

        “They are so concerned for their life that their anxiety makes life unbearable, even when they have the things they think they want. Their very concern for enjoyment makes them unhappy… I will hold to the saying that: ‘Perfect joy is to be without joy. Perfect praise is to be without praise.’ If you ask ‘what ought to be done’ and ‘what ought not to be done’ on earth in order to produce happiness, I answer that these questions do not have an answer. There is no way of determining such things…”

        Thomas Merton, The Way Of Chuang Tzu, via Sunbeams (Page 53)

          “Smart isn’t easily measurable. Neither is beautiful, good or successful. And especially happy. A high SAT score is a measure of whether or not you scored well on the SAT. That’s it. A bank balance is a measure of how much money you have in the bank. That’s all. In the face of the difficulty the system has in measuring things that don’t measure, we create proxies. Things like popularity as a proxy for whether a work of human creativity has worth or not. It’s a method built to process commodities instead of people, and it’s running amok.”

          Seth Godin, Blog

            “What I used to think of as happiness was merely distraction from the pain. The pain of disconnection, of separateness from you. All longing, all yearning, all thirst, flung on unworthy surrogates, false idols, unsated by unworthy objects, still pulling us unwillingly back together.”

            Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 208)

              “Eagerly anticipating some future event, passionately imagining something you desire, looking forward to some happy scenario—as pleasurable as these activities might seem, they ruin your chance at happiness here and now. Locate that yearning for more, better, someday and see it for what it is: the enemy of your contentment. Choose it or your happiness. As Epictetus says, the two are not compatible.”

              Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 57)

                “It is quite impossible to unite happiness with a yearning for what we don’t have. Happiness has all that it wants, and resembling the well-fed, there shouldn’t be hunger or thirst.”

                Epictetus, Discourses, via The Daily Stoic (Page 57)

                Osho Quote on Bliss and How Effort is Required for Higher States of Mind

                  “To me, to be blissful is the greatest courage. To be miserable is very cowardly. In fact to be miserable, nothing is needed. Any coward can do it, any fool can do it. Everybody is capable of being miserable, but to be blissful, great courage is needed—it is an uphill task.”

                  Osho, Courage (Page 60)

                  Beyond the Quote (319/365)

                  In our entire history we have never been more comfortable, more connected, and more safe than we are today and yet, happiness seems to be as far away as it ever has been. Why is that? Shouldn’t the technological advances, ease of access, and revolutions in connection increase our levels of happiness exponentially—or at least place it significantly closer? Intuitively speaking, it feels like they should, right? What gives?

                  Read More »Osho Quote on Bliss and How Effort is Required for Higher States of Mind

                    “Why do you need to be pleasant within? The answer is self-evident. When you are in a pleasant inner state, you are naturally pleasant to everyone and everything around you. No scripture or philosophy is needed to instruct you to be good to others. It is a natural outcome when you are feeling good within yourself. Inner pleasantness is a surefire insurance for the making of a peaceful society and a joyful world.”

                    Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 27)

                    Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide To Joy [Book]

                      Inner Engineering by Sadhguru

                      By: Sadhguru

                      From this Book:  37 Quotes

                      Book Overview:  A yogi lives life in this expansive state, and in this transformative book Sadhguru tells the story of his own awakening, from a boy with an unusual affinity for the natural world to a young daredevil who crossed the Indian continent on his motorcycle. Today, as the founder of Isha, an organization devoted to humanitarian causes, he lights the path for millions. The term guru, he notes, means “dispeller of darkness, someone who opens the door for you. . . . As a guru, I have no doctrine to teach, no philosophy to impart, no belief to propagate. And that is because the only solution for all the ills that plague humanity is self-transformation. Self-transformation means that nothing of the old remains. It is a dimensional shift in the way you perceive and experience life.” The wisdom distilled in this accessible, profound, and engaging book offers readers time-tested tools that are fresh, alive, and radiantly new. Inner Engineering presents a revolutionary way of thinking about our agency and our humanity and the opportunity to achieve nothing less than a life of joy.

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                      Great on Kindle. Great Experience. Great Value. The Kindle edition of this book comes highly recommended on Amazon.

                      Post(s) Inspired by This Book:

                      Naval Ravikant Quote on Desire and How It Works Against Your Pursuit of Happiness

                        “Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.”

                        Naval Ravikant, Medium

                        Beyond the Quote (272/365)

                        How many contracts of unhappiness have you signed? And how lengthy are the terms for each? Is the contract of your desire going to take you a week to obtain? A month? 12 months? 48 months? 72 months? Or is the contract you signed more like a 30 year mortgage? Are you really okay with being unhappy for that amount of time? …For any amount of time? And for what? A fancy car? A luxury watch? A playboy mansion? How much of your life are you willing to sacrifice for these things?

                        Read More »Naval Ravikant Quote on Desire and How It Works Against Your Pursuit of Happiness

                          “Success is largely the failures you avoid. Health is the injuries you don’t sustain. Wealth is the purchases you don’t make. Happiness is the objects you don’t desire. Peace of mind is the arguments you don’t engage. Avoid the bad to protect the good.”

                          James Clear, Blog

                            “The most important trick to be happy is to realize that happiness is a choice that you make and a skill that you develop. You choose to be happy, and then you work at it. It’s just like building muscles.”

                            Naval Ravikant, Medium