Happy Thanksgiving
Thoughts on happiness
There is a spectrum that makes us humans sensitive to the flow of time.
Animals don’t have this. This spectrum makes it easier for us to achieve, plan, build, create, and pursue. It also makes it possible to suffer “in the middle,” in our own minds, by our own choice.
Our increased capacity to think into the future and remember from the past can create liabilities — regret from the past and the anxiety of the future. Because both of these places are realms inside of time that we can visit and return from, you can get trapped in them.
Alan Watts put it wonderfully:
For the animal to be happy, it is enough that this moment be enjoyable. But man is hardly satisfied with this at all. He is much more concerned to have enjoyable memories and expectations — especially the latter. With these assured, he can put up with an extremely miserable present. Without this assurance, he can be extremely miserable in the midst of immediate physical pleasure.
The things that make us exceptional, often do not make us more happy. The question seems to be this: “How do I use the tools, gifts, and talents I’ve been given to advance, without making the cost of advancement so expensive that it is no longer worth it?”
To answer this question we have to understand the balance of happiness.
Aristotle defined happiness (eudaimonia) as a life aligned with “virtue” and “reason.” To be happy, one simply achieved their purpose (telos) — to complete activity in line with excellence (arete).
“Happiness depends upon ourselves.” — Nicomachean Ethics, Book I
But here is the problem: the feeling of happiness is subjective. It is defined differently by different people. Why is it that you can meet someone with horrible circumstances and a past filled with difficulty, yet they seem happy… and someone else, separated by time and distance, can be living a life of the top 1%, and be deeply unhappy…?
Their “grids” are different.
The definitions are different.
And it comes down to a psychological (or neurochemical) state of gratitude. Gratitude is a state shift that changes how your brain predicts reality1. Your threat-detection shifts into a growth-oriented operating system.
It begins as attention.
You change what you’re paying attention to, and then the brain enters selective attention, turning off certain circuits and turning on others. It’s hilarious that we know this now through neuroscience, but the apostle Paul knew it thousands of years ago through the Holy Spirit.
Scripture is the greatest human operating system manual in the history of the world.
“So keep your thoughts continually fixed on all that is authentic and real, honorable and admirable, beautiful and respectful, pure and holy, merciful and kind. And fasten your thoughts on every glorious work of God, praising him always.” -Philippians 4:8 (TPT)
Once the attention shifts, the “prediction” loops change. Our brains are always trying to predict what’s going to happen next — but it uses expectation to do that2. Some of our expectations come from our experience and other expectations come from what we’ve conditioned ourselves to expect.
Imagine your expectations as a weighted prediction of:
What happened before
What you’re focused on now
What you’re afraid of
What you believe is possible
These things combine to create “prediction” signals that cause you to feel certain ways. Gratitude alters this entire equation by shifting attention away from threat and giving the brain new data for future predictions. It creates legitimate ripple effects in your reality, though, because most of our reality is generative — it’s perpetuating itself, and it’s cloning a blueprint of sorts. That blueprint is “what do we expect to happen?”
Therein lies the trap of anxiety.
What you fear, you enable and, ultimately, create.
Again, Scripture nails it:
Do not be anxious or worried about anything, but in everything [every circumstance and situation] by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, continue to make your [specific] requests known to God. -Philippians 4:6 (AMP)
This gratitude retrains the mind to begin to expect what you’re asking for. It literally re-codes your prediction loops and builds an expansive mindset that isn’t afraid of difficulty. It is almost impossible to feel anxiety when you are in a state of gratitude — and it is almost impossible to feel thankful or grateful when you are in a state of anxiety.
They are two holistically different operating systems.
Happiness is not what you have, it’s who you believe you’re becoming and whether you feel like it is worth it
The capacity to consciously advance creates the capacity to feel pain; happiness is not the absence of pain, but rather the meaning derived from something painful but worth it
Your grid goes “up” and “down” in correlation; this means if you’ve never experienced loss you will not have the grid to experience gain… therefore, “count it all joy” when life is difficult (James 1), it gives you the appropriate grid to experience new levels of advancement, blessing, and progress
We can treat suffering as a down payment, and use anxiety/worry as diagnostics. When you experience frustration, you’re paying for something in the future - when you experience anxiety, you’re engaged in avoidance, and the payment will amortize into your future until you stop avoiding it
Difficult times are an amazing gift if you can keep your attention lined up and deployed properly.
Every advancement in human history has come at the hands of difficult, demanding, frustrating situations. Nothing good comes out of a kitchen devoid of heat. If 2025 has been intense for you, think to yourself, “Good. I am paying my down payment. Let’s get what we paid for.”
If your 2025 has been amazing, think to yourself, “Good. I am glad I paid for this. Where is my next investment?”
I’ll leave you with a quote that I like, but before I do, an announcement:
My new book, “The Currency of Heaven,” releases December 10th (you’re invited to join the release party). This book cost me a fortune and I can’t wait to share it with you.
In departure:
When painful experiences result in a higher position up the mountains of virtue, we can say that pain resulted in something good. When it results in a lower degree of virtue, or even an equal degree, we can say the pain resulted in something bad because the unpleasant experience did not serve us in any way. - Ryan Bush
Happy Thanksgiving!
-Taylor Welch
Fox, G. R., Kaplan, J., Damasio, H., & Damasio, A. (2015). Neural correlates of gratitude. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1491.
Barrett, L. F. (2017). How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
It occurs to me that faith alters the weighting of the expectation prediction algorithm. What you are afraid of is minimized. What happened before is less relevant. What you are focused on now and what you believe is possible are emphasized if you have faith like a mustard seed, which is a weed that chokes out every other plant in the garden of your psyche.
Well said, these are the promises and benefits found in “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding”and guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:7)