Happiness On Demand

Hello Reader,

I’ve suffered from depression (and fortunately healed from it) twice.

Each time, I’ve asked myself the same questions:

What is depression, really? What causes it? Why am I stuck with it?

In this newsletter, I’ll present to you the answers that I’ve found along the way.

These are not definitive answers by any means, rather, these are my observations about the matter, based on my personal experience.

But I believe this information could be quite helpful, so grab a cup of your favorite drink, and take a look.

(It's a long one, again, so maybe grab a large cup.)

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The first time I was depressed, I didn’t even know what depression was.

I could not put a name on how I was feeling, let alone associate my emotional state with depression. Because I hadn’t had a reason to look into what depression was. I thought I was doing just fine.

I was living what I thought was the dream. I had completed the obstacle course of life with flawless results. I had studied hard and graduated with excellent grades.

I had a steady job at a high-profile company, a corporate bank, no less, and made good money. I was a respected member of the team among my colleagues and well-liked by my clients.

I had done what I had been told was needed to be done for being happy.

I had checked all the boxes.

I had done what everyone had told me to do.

Yet, I wasn’t happy. I was pretty much the opposite of happy.

I could recognise the constant stress and anxiety that my job caused me. Even during the luxuriously long four week summer vacation (we have that in Finland) I could not calm down and enjoy my life.

I did the things I dreamt of doing: traveled, partied, went to the beach to catch some sun. I had money to spare. I had plenty of relationship opportunities. I had just bought my dream car.

None of those things mattered. Stress and anxiety were constant companions up to the point where I dreaded getting out of bed and looking at my phone, because I just couldn’t deal with anything.

Physically I was a wreck too. My heartbeat was always fast. I felt tired. Irritated. I had pains in my body. I did not understand why it had gotten to this point.

But what I was sure of was that this sure as hell wasn’t happiness.

Then, as if things weren’t bad enough, I lost my brother on one dark and rainy October night.

I did not know how to deal with the emotions that followed. In fact, I realized that I had never learned to listen to or “deal with” any of my emotions.

I had always disregarded or neglected all of my emotions, because I did not understand them. Even the positive ones, like love, were strange to me and I always tried to avoid confrontation with any of them. I ran away from my emotions, hid behind endless parties and alcohol.

This was more than ten years ago now. Those events led me to create Happiness on Demand and write a book by the same name​

I understood later, that the depression I experienced back then was caused by “misalignment”.

I was living a life that was not truly mine.

I had always thought that success in life would equal happiness. And while that may be somewhat true, I did not know what “success” was.

I just did what I had learned to do. I followed the narrative everyone else repeated: study hard, get a good job, make a lot of money, get a nice car, buy a house, start a family, and so on.

I always believed that I would find happiness at the end of that journey. That’s what everyone had told me.

But all the things I did were things someone else expected me to do. I had never even once stopped and asked myself “what do I want to do with my life?”. What were my values? What brought me genuine joy? What things were truly important?

I lived a life that was never meant for me. It was not aligned with who I was or who I wanted to be. Constantly fighting my core values and living a life that didn’t bring me any fulfilment took their toll and led me to losing my energy and what little joy I ever had.

I became depressed.

It took me years to understand that aligning with one’s purpose, passion, values, hopes and dreams should be the starting point.

Working from that starting point makes happiness a part of the journey.

And the more you fight who you are (either consciously or unconsciously) the more happiness slips away from your grasp.

it was this alignment that led me to a happy, fulfilling life. One that I had actually always dreamed of.

(Note: Learning to understand emotions and deal with them healthily is also a fundamental part of finding true, lasting happiness).

This was true up until about a year ago, when I became depressed again.

But this time, it was for entirely different reasons.

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The second time I became depressed now feels like running into one problem after another.

Every area of my life just seemed to go down the gutter.

I couldn’t make enough money to pay my rent, I couldn’t start a relationship, my usual tips and tricks for calming down and being grateful didn’t seem to work, I was again tired and irritated, anxious and stressed.

But I knew I was on the right path in life. I knew how to deal with my emotions.

This wasn’t the same as the first time.

It was more, an accumulation of different things - environmental, financial, physical, psychological and spiritual.

But yet again, the path out of depression was pretty much the same: Aligning with who I was and who I wanted to be.

Only this time, it didn’t take years to fix things. It took only a couple of weeks.

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So what I’m getting at here is this:

There’s not a single universal cause for depression. I became depressed for two quite different reasons, or multiple reasons to be precise.

You are unique and so are your circumstances.

Everything plays a role and there can be many things contributing to how you feel. Your surroundings play a big role, influencing your thoughts, words and actions.

Your physical condition is linked to the well-being of your mind.

Your mind has many layers which interact with each other (as well as dwell on the past or project to the future), all contributing to your overall state of being.

You are also a spiritual being, and your connection with the spirit plays a big role. Do you find meaning in what you do? Are you contributing to the community around you? Can you feel a connection with something ‘bigger than yourself’?

All of these factors play a role in your overall well-being.

But,

What I can gather from everything that I’ve experienced and learned, is that FREEDOM could be the common denominator behind happiness and depression.

The more freedom you have for expressing who you are and who you truly want to be (behind all the layers of your conscious mind, the ego), the happier (less depressed) you will likely be.

Freedom, of course, covers many aspects of life: financial freedom, emotional freedom, physical freedom, freedom of thought and so on.

If there are constraints in your life that block your freedom, for example financial struggles, physical pain (that restricts movement), emotional blocks (constant stress, anxiety etc), you are more likely to become depressed.

At least that’s been true in my case.

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The first time my depression was caused by a lack of freedom to express who I truly was deep inside.

It was also a lack of freedom from my emotions, because I did not understand them and didn’t know how to deal with any of them. I was held captive by my emotions and imprisoned in a life that someone else had created for me (society, teachers, parents, even friends, all told me the same story).

The second time my depression was caused by the lack of freedom in many other areas: I was lacking financial freedom and that led to the loss of physical freedom (I was forced to move out of my home and live “on the road” for a while) and that, in turn, led to a loss of psychological freedom (not having a “safe space” caused my emotions and negative thoughts to once again pile up), and so on.

Lack of freedom could very well be the root cause of depression.

The Latin root of depression is deprimere — meaning “to press down or sink”. So literally, you are either free or you are being “pressed down”, unable to express yourself physically, mentally, or spiritually.

It’s been found in studies, that freedom (autonomy, or the freedom to make life choices) is the single most important contributor to individual happiness. So there’s also that backing this idea up.

I know it’s a broad and general statement to say depression is caused by the lack of freedom, but I believe it’s still useful.

Because awareness is the first step to healing.

You have to figure out what’s broken if you want to fix it. You need to be aware about the importance of freedom to give yourself a fighting chance.

Freedom, be it financial, emotional, physical, mental or spiritual, or anything else, is required for you to truly express who you are and create who you wish to become.

That also takes depression to a whole new level: Spiritual.

And I know this is a harder to grasp territory, but it’s also needed for awareness. The spirit, the third part of your body/mind/spirit complex, is freedom itself. In its purest form it is unbound by space, time or any other “limitation”.

The spirit is free, but when you are born to this physical existence, the spirit binds itself to the contextual limits of the physical body also. Therefore, when your mind or body experience lack of freedom, your spirit experiences that as well - and lack of freedom is the opposite of what the spirit is. So the spirit could also become “depressed” in this sense.

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To conclude, it seems that depression is a holistic matter, affecting body, mind and spirit alike.

It may not be possible to pinpoint one exact reason that causes depression, as it can happen on multiple levels of being at the same time.

(Although I do want to add that prolonged grief will likely become depression. If you are unable to express your emotions of grief healthily and naturally, like I did, it will likely lead to depression.)

But you, you circumstances, and you life is so unique and your deepest thoughts, beliefs, and truths known only to you, that the root causes of any negative mental state affecting you are also unique to you.

Figure this out, and look for ways to gain more freedom.

More freedom will likely bring more happiness to your life.

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Until next time,

​Think happy thoughts!

​- Atte

P.S. I mentioned that understanding your emotions and dealing with them in a healthy way is one of the fundamentals of living a happy life without anxiety or depression. So here's my guide to understanding and handling emotions.

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