4 Steps to Lasting Happiness & The Right "Food" for Happiness: from Awareness by Tony de Mello

We think: when everything is right with the world, then I’ll feel good. But it's the opposite: when I feel good, everything is right with the world.

Tony De Mello has the distinct classification of spiritual contemplative, Jesuit priest and psychotherapist.

His book — Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality — is the only book I’ve seen recommended by Eckhart Tolle, Tim Ferris, and Naval Ravikant. At a glance it doesn’t sound like it’s about happiness. But it’s about just that: a wake-up call for happiness.

Through awareness, we discover the happiness that’s already here. It’s a matter of waking up to the happiness that’s right in front of us and having the right “food” to sustain it.  

This essay summarizes the key points of the book. (Warning - Tony offers sort of a spiritual tough love, be ready for the challenge…)

Wake Up First

Tony emphasizes that all of this is about waking up.

Most of us go through life relatively asleep. We are caught up in the games we’re so busy playing and the stories that we’ve constructed for ourselves. Here’s the wake-up call – these games, thoughts, beliefs, stories, expectations, norms, etc. are not reality.

They’re all made up.

They’re intangible things made up by people like us.

Many religious traditions talk about enlightenment. Here’s a Tony-ism story about waking up. There’s a homeless man who lays down beside the river. He’s starving and cold. As he is about to fall asleep a brand new Cadillac pulls up beside him. A beautiful young lady steps out and says “it’s so cold out here and you look hungry, why don’t you come back with me and I’ll take care of you”.

So they arrive at a beautiful mansion outside the city. He has a great dinner and is shown to the warm, cozy guest room. As he settles in for bed he hears a knock on his door and it opens slightly. The beautiful young lady steps in wearing an undone silk robe.

“I thought you might be a little lonely,” she says, “so why don’t I keep you company tonight.” As she climbs into bed he rolls over and falls right into the river.

Wake up! That’s enlightenment! The most important thing, the foundation for wisdom and happiness, is awareness.

Awareness is a willingness to face reality and practice self-observation without judgement.

4 Steps to Lasting Happiness

Once we have awareness, Tony offers four steps to lasting happiness.

(1)  Get in touch with how you feel. You must be aware of your negative emotions. Unhappiness is like a disease – we have to detect it before we can cure it.

(2)  Realize the feeling is in you – it’s not in reality. That’s a pretty simple truth that flies over our heads. When it rains on your picnic who is upset, you or the rain? If there were no more human beings the world would keep on turning – there’d be no problem. Reality is just reality – we are the ones who project our problems onto it.

(3)  Don’t identify with the negative feeling. This is important. We often say “I’m unhappy” or “I’m depressed”. But you are not the depression. You might feel the depression. But it’s not you. How could it be you if you’re the one feeling it? Once you learn to stop identifying with the negative then everything changes. It’s like when you throw black paint into the air does the air turn black? Not identifying creates space to let negative feelings pass away like clouds lifting to reveal a blue sky.

(4)  Change yourself. We often think the way to happiness is to change the world or change others. Imagine I go to the doctor and he says “great I understand your symptoms, let me prescribe some medication for your neighbor”. I say “thank you very much, that makes me feel much better”. That’s absurd, but that’s what we all do! We think when everything is right with the world then I’ll feel good but in truth when I feel good everything is right with the world.

The Right “Food” for Happiness

Finally, we need the right sort of food to nourish our happiness. Here’s an excerpt…

Nourish yourself on good, wholesome food. I’m not talking about actual food, I’m talking about sunsets, about nature, about a good movie, about a good book, about enjoyable work, about good company, and hopefully you will break your addictions to those other feelings.

What kind of feeling comes upon you when you’re in touch with nature, or when you’re absorbed in work that you love? Or when you’re really conversing with someone whose company you enjoy in openness and intimacy without clinging? What kinds of feelings do you have? Compare those feelings with the feelings you have when you win an argument, or when you win a race, or when you become popular, or when everybody’s applauding you.

The latter feelings I call worldly feelings; the former feelings I call soul feelings. Lots of people gain the world and lose their soul. Lots of people live empty, soulless lives because they’re feeding themselves on popularity, appreciation, and praise, on “I’m okay, you’re okay,” look at me, attend to me, support me, value me, on being the boss, on having power, on winning the race. Do you feed yourself on that? If you do, you’re dead. You’ve lost your soul. Feed yourself on other, more nourishing food.

Tony says most people don’t want happiness – they want relief. They want something easy.

He says - imagine you’re up to your nose in a tank of liquid sh*t and you’re trying to stop people from making waves. Just get out of the tank!

Stop identifying with all of the worries, expectations, desires, and conditions you’ve placed on your happiness. Stop identifying with all of the mind’s inventions. It’s not peace of mind it’s peace from mind.

Start with this awareness. Face reality as it is - pure, undifferentiated occurrence. Observe the patterns of your experience and practice transforming your inner conditions regardless of what happens outside. Then feed your happiness on wholesome, nourishing soul food (not the spiritual junk food society pumps into us).

Happiness is waking up to our own innate capacity to transform through awareness.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my transmission of Tony’s work. Your happiness nerd,

Jackson