What You Really Want: Feelings
You do not really want a house, or a car, or even a million dollars; you just want to feel like you own a house, a car and a million dollars.
You don’t really want things, you want the feelings that those things will give you.
The problem with things is that they break, get old, need maintenance, need management, and need a place for storage. What is great about feelings is that feelings are free, they are self-generated, and they are mostly under your control.
The problem of happiness can be reduced to the question: how can you get the feelings without the things?
Now there are plenty of dysfunctional ways to get positive feelings or states, namely:
-Taking drugs (e.g., meth, cocaine, heroin, alcohol)
-Overeating (e.g., sugar addiction)
-Risk Taking (e.g., base jumping, Jackass-like stunt behavior)
-Anger and violence
What makes these methods dysfunctional are the negative consequences that often result from this behavior.
So, the goal is to use constructive methods to generate positive feelings or states.
