#empathogens

I think there's probably a lot of different ways to get to get there, and there are whole books and institutions dedicated to providing a path (looking at you Buddhism), and different things work better or worse for different people and if there is a secret to getting there faster, I don't know it. Empathogens and self-reflection seems like an option not available for most of human history so there may be some low-hanging fruit there.

But I'm pretty sure a robustly happy person would stress waaay less than you do about the future. They'd worry less about what other people thought about them. They wouldn't spend mental energy holding grudges. They'd worry less about policing their own thoughts. If they had expectations they wouldn't worry about them coming to pass or not. They wouldn't stress about maximal efficiency. They wouldn't stress about the past of all things, something that can't be changed. And goodness knows they wouldn't judge themselves. They'd appreciate people for who they were not who they could be, and if they didn't fit with someone they'd cut them out of their life. They'd cry and laugh and get angry or afraid in response to immediate stimuli but they wouldn't worry about crying, they wouldn't be ashamed of it, they would neither push it away and repress it or cling to it past its time. And once the stimuli was passed they'd return to their happy, accepting, equilibrium. And maybe they'd know that, so having emotions in the moment wouldn't be so scary. The link between emotion and reality would be less, if something bad happened they would be sad but not despair.