Everyone wants to be happy. Here is a strange twist: one of the most useful rulebooks on happiness came from a pessimist. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was famous for his gloomy outlook and held that happiness was little more than an illusion. Yet he also worked out a set of rules to help people avoid needless suffering and reach a steady kind of contentment.

Do not envy

To him, envy was a deeply negative emotion. Living with it keeps us constantly dissatisfied and pulls us away from happiness. Comparing ourselves with others also makes us doubt ourselves. Since every person is different, the comparison is unfair from the start, so it is better to drop it.

Let go of bad results

Accept that some of your decisions will be wrong and some efforts will fail. His advice was to always give your best. Then a poor result cannot make you feel bad, because you know you did all you could.

Follow your instincts

Some people are creative and some are logical. Some give themselves to action, others to reflection. This rule asks us to follow our natural leanings, so that we can be ourselves and come to know ourselves better.

Be independent

Depend on yourself. That way you will not feel let down by other people or by decisions you have no control over. Do not hand others the power to set your mood.

Be realistic

Know your limits, and do not get swept away by unrealistic desires, so you are not crushed when they do not come true. Look honestly at where you stand and what goals are open to you. This does not mean giving up on dreams. It means fitting them to what is possible.

Value what you have, and live now

Happiness needs us to see beyond our possessions. That protects us from envy and helps us value the things that truly matter. The last rule concerns time. Getting lost in past problems or worrying over the future does us no good. We cannot undo the choices we made, so the wise course is to enjoy the present.

Friends stay with us for life and fill it with happiness, through every struggle and every effort. Almost everyone enjoys the company of good friends, and the more of them you have around you, the brighter life tends to feel. Here is how to make your circle wider and better.

Begin with people you already know

The easiest place to start is with familiar faces: old friends and people you once knew. Get in touch with them online, then plan a proper meet-up or simply spend an afternoon together. Growing your circle through people you already know is enjoyable and low on awkwardness. All it needs is for you to make the first move.

Get to know your friends’ friends

Friendship has no fixed borders. You can always reach out to new people if you choose to. One natural route is through the friends of your friends. Spend time with them if you feel at ease, and join in their conversations. That is how you come to know them, and how new names quietly become friends.

Be social

You cannot make new friends while staying at home. Go to parties and social gatherings where you can meet new people. Start a conversation about something you both care about. Exchange numbers, and keep in touch through messaging apps afterwards. Where your ways of thinking match, the friendship will grow on its own.

A bigger circle is not the whole point. What you are really looking for is a few more people who make the hard days easier and the good days better. They are out there, and most of them are waiting for someone else to say hello first.

Today is a fine day to simply be yourself. It sounds easy enough. Take pride in who you are: your beliefs, what life has taught you, and the hard times you have come through on the road of life. Yet letting all of that show while you move through an ordinary day can feel surprisingly difficult.

The beauty is already there

There is something beautiful in every one of us. To let it shine and be seen, we first have to notice it and value it ourselves. No one else can switch on that light for you.

Stop the inner judge

You will find this inner light once you stop passing judgment on yourself. When you do, it does not stay inside. It spreads to the people around you. It lights up your own way forward, and it helps others find theirs.

Once you have truly seen yourself and everything that makes you who you are, it becomes hard to keep it hidden. You will want to share it with the world.

Start at the mirror

Seeing yourself this way also makes it easier to appreciate the person who looks back at you from the mirror each day. Everyone has a smile, but yours belongs to you and no one else. There is something remarkable about watching joy and calm spread across your own face when you smile at yourself.

Try it tomorrow morning. It costs nothing, takes a second, and sets the tone for the hours that follow.

When we find ourselves in a painful mental or emotional place, the instinct is to keep fighting, searching for any way to escape the hurt. Yet the most useful first step is the opposite. Quiet your mind.

The lesson of the thorn bush

Picture yourself tangled in a thorn bush. Your first move should be to stop struggling. That alone stops the thorns from digging deeper, so the immediate pain eases. Then you can look carefully at what holds you, free yourself from one branch at a time, and finally step out of the bush and away from the pain altogether.

A troubled mind works the same way. Make a little room inside yourself. From that space you gain a view of the situation, and you can begin to work your way out of it step by step.

How the trap tightens

Pain and inner conflict make us feel that we must act at once, and so we often act unwisely and without thinking. Those hasty actions add more friction and more pain, which push us to act hastily again. A vicious cycle forms between a restless, uncomfortable mind and choices that only make matters worse.

How stillness sets you free

Build the habit of calming both mind and body whenever you are hurting. Simply watching what is happening for a while makes room for your natural intelligence and good sense to start working. You begin to see clearly what needs to be done, and you act in ways that actually solve the problem.

This sets up a better cycle. A still mind leads to wise action, wise action solves the challenge, and solving it brings a calmer mind.

Hard times and difficulties come to every life. You cannot avoid problems, but you can certainly choose how you respond to them.

It is a mistake to believe that your problems are a punishment for things you did wrong in the past. Troubles come to everyone, even to the kindest and most saintly people who ever lived.

A problem is not a verdict

Never let your problems become the measure of your worth. You do not lose any of your value as a person because life has become difficult.

The best way to be ready for problems is to accept that they are part of living. They belong to the imperfections that make life meaningful and worth the effort. We often say there is no gain without pain. In the same way, a life with no difficulty at all would also have no real happiness and no deep joy, because there would be nothing to measure them against.

Start with yourself

The truth is that your relationship with yourself is the most important one you will ever have. It is also the base on which every other relationship stands, so it makes sense to put it first and to look after it.

When you love someone more than you love yourself, you tend to give in too often. You overlook the warning signs. You get hurt, and slowly you lose yourself inside the relationship. You cannot love another person in a healthy way until you have learned to love yourself.

What self-respect makes possible

Caring for yourself helps you set firmer boundaries. It also gives you the courage to walk away from anything, or anyone, that does you no good.

So when the next problem arrives, treat it as part of the road, not as a judgment on the traveller. Your worth was never up for debate.

A routine means doing the same things again and again, so to many young people it sounds like a way to drain all the spontaneity out of life. Yet a steady routine gives you real control over how your life unfolds, which makes it well worth the time and effort it asks of you. Here is what it gives back.

It makes you efficient

When you repeat the same patterns and tasks day after day, you get better at them. Soon they become second nature and you no longer need to think about doing them. You get more done with less effort, and your productivity rises.

It gives your life structure

Success needs structure. A routine lays a solid foundation for organising your day. When you know exactly how the day will run, you know how to spread your energy across it instead of spending it all by noon.

It gives you time to relax

Most of us live busier lives each year, and simply sitting back has become a rare luxury. A good routine arranges your day so efficiently that a slot for rest fits in. That is the beauty of it: knowing there is relaxation built into the day is a strong reward for sticking with the plan, and it keeps you motivated.

It strengthens your self-determination

Daily routines do become habits, but not overnight. It takes willpower and self-discipline to make sure, for example, that you rise at six every morning, go for a run of about three miles, and then prepare a fresh, healthy breakfast.

Keep at it, and you will find yourself getting more done than ever. That change does not come from one heroic day. It comes from the quiet power of the same good day, repeated.

Your family made you who you are today: a little odd, a little anxious, and quite wonderful. There are days when their embarrassing stories and their drama make you want to move far away and start again under a new name. Even then, they come first. So it is worth pausing to thank them for the lessons no one else could have taught.

How to learn from example

Your family teaches you that even the people closest to you get things wrong. It happens to all of us, and often. By watching those closest to us make mistakes, we learn how to avoid the same ones in our own lives.

Friendship starts at home

Your first friends were your brothers, sisters and cousins, and those early bonds shape every relationship you form later. With them you learned about trust, about responsibility, and about some very sharp teasing. They taught you how to build a life without making a complete mess of it by treating people badly. Above all, they showed you the way to forgive, and how to let a hurt go.

What really matters

Every member of your family would come to your rescue if you needed them. In the end, family matters more than anything else you have, so naturally they are the ones who show you what is valuable and what is not. With every passing year, you appreciate more of what they bring to your life.

Who you are, and owning it

Under all the silliness there is love. You may be a bit strange, but strange can be strong. Knowing your family is behind you makes it far easier to be yourself and to accept every part of your personality.

No family is perfect, and these lessons rarely arrive gently. But they arrive early, and they stay for life.

Once upon a time, a woodcutter and his wife made their home deep in a forest. They had very little money, yet they were very happy.

One day the woodcutter went looking for trees to cut. He found a tall, strong one, and as he lifted his axe he heard a small voice crying for help. He searched around and found, at the foot of the tree, a fairy whose wings were pinned beneath a fallen trunk.

“How can I move something so heavy?” he asked. The fairy told him how. Using his axe and a rock as a lever, he raised the trunk and set her free. To thank him for saving her life, she told him to go home and make three wishes. All three, she promised, would come true.

Three wishes, gone in an evening

The woodcutter ran home. “Cook us a good meal from whatever we have,” he told his wife. “I am starving, and then I have wonderful news.”

“All we have is soup,” she sighed. “If only we had a few sausages to go with it.” At once, sausages appeared on the table.

The woodcutter was furious. “You have wasted a wish! Only two are left. I wish those sausages were stuck to your nose!” And there they were, hanging from the end of her nose.

Now she was the angry one, and he could not stop laughing at how she looked. They tried pulling the sausages off. They tried grease. Nothing worked. Sad and worried, they had one wish left, and she could not live like this.

“We have no choice,” said the woodcutter. The last wish was spent, and the sausages fell away. His wife admitted she had been planning to wish for firewood to keep them warm. She thanked him for giving up the final wish for her.

What they learned

Sitting together, they saw that they had been happy before the wishes ever arrived, and could be happier without them. They ate the sausages for supper, enjoyed being together, and lived happily ever after.

The moral is simple: greed is not a good thing. When we stop to value what we already have, we find we were richer than we thought.

Being clever helps if you want to succeed, but it is not enough. Commitment and mental toughness are the parts you cannot do without. The good news is that the mind’s stamina can be built, much like the body’s, through a few ordinary habits.

Sleep enough

The brain needs rest. Sleep is its private time, when it repairs and rebuilds its neural connections and clears away the clutter of the day. Cut your sleep short and you take that repair time away. The result shows up as weaker stamina and a duller edge.

Eat for your brain

Good nutrition is central to mental stamina. The brain uses a great deal of energy and needs a steady supply of nutrients to work well, and it cannot do so if your meals fall short. A diet that supports the brain includes enough protein and iron. Keep processed sugar to a minimum. The article also suggests a daily multivitamin; if you are unsure whether you need one, ask your doctor.

Exercise daily

Rest and movement are both important for the brain. That is why the common advice is to exercise for at least 30 minutes every day. Exercise strengthens muscles, and it also keeps the brain working at its best. A brisk walk of just five minutes is enough to rouse a sluggish mind. If you have the choice, exercise outside: time outdoors does more for the brain than the same workout inside the house.

Play games that demand focus

Concentration sharpens the mind. Games such as chess or Chinese checkers build brain stamina, and so do Scrabble, Monopoly and card games, because they call for strategy, analysis and the patience to see a long game through.

No single habit here is dramatic. Together, sleep, food, movement and focused play make a mind that holds steady for longer when the work gets hard.

Confucius lived from 551 to 479 BC and is widely regarded as the most influential philosopher the East has produced. His teachings were mainly about morality, both in how a person conducts a private life and in how a society is governed. Ten of the sayings handed down in his name are worth slow reading.

On effort and direction

Your pace is not the issue. What matters is that you keep moving. A slow walker who never stops still arrives.

When a goal starts to look out of reach, do not shrink the goal. Change the steps you are taking towards it.

Chasing small advantages can keep you from great things. The person busy collecting minor wins rarely has the patience for the large work that changes a life.

And wherever you choose to go, go there with your whole heart. Half an effort carries half a person.

On people

Choose friends who are better than you in some way. Company that stretches you helps you grow; company that only flatters you keeps you where you are.

If people are speaking ill of you behind your back, notice where they are standing. They are behind you.

If you hate someone, they have already defeated you, because they now occupy your mind and steer your mood.

On the self

When anger rises, think first of what follows from it. A moment of pause can save a long regret.

The superior person looks for answers within. The small person looks for them in others, and blames others when they are not found.

Teach only those who are ready to learn, and readiness begins when someone realises how much they do not know. Advice poured into a mind that believes it is already full simply runs off.

None of these lines needs a scholar to explain it. Each one asks only to be practised, one day at a time, which is perhaps why they have lasted so long.