I have a deep philosophical question for you:

If you want to feel happier should you:

• Put up with the experiences you are having and change how you feel about them?

• Or should you change the experiences into something better, so there is an external reason to feel happier?

Should a man without money persuade himself it is OK to be poor? Or should he go out and get enough money to feel glad about life? [We are brainwashed in our Christian culture to view poverty as desirable so maybe this isn’t an ideal example.]

What about a man who is overweight, unfit and unable to enjoy zestful pursuits? Should he “put up with” this state of health and feel good about himself? Die young as a result? Or start a programme and re-capture some his lost vitality?

Well the answer, I’m sure, is aspects of both. You don’t need to let yourself feel bad about what you’ve got. But the second choice has always seemed more appealing to me. You must try to better the environment you are in. I consider it a law of good living. To accept what you’ve got is a kind of defeatism, a limitation. It is a circumscribed or Conditional Happiness.

It’s perfectly fine to feel good about where you are; it need not stifle the ambition to do better! By all means enjoy the present; but don’t forget to carve yourself a bright and beautiful future! Actually, happiness is found in both aspects of this maxim.

This comes down to a difference between Eastern and Western philosophies. The oriental view tends to be more accepting, passive and unambitious. We have lately learned a lot from Eastern views. But it isn’t all correct and I deplore the tendency to accept it as if it were de facto proper and “right” and that Indian gurus are the wisest of the wise. Indian philosophy isn’t all that successful, when you look at the starving millions and their own apparent indifference to the plight of others.

This is also to diminish our own (Western) considerable contribution to the evolution of thought. In what we call the West we have a lot more emphasis on success and achievement. There is good and bad in this, since we gained electronic and medical technology. But then also we have the means of global destruction and annihilation. We are rightly proud of some our medical advancements.

But the Buddhist philosopher might argue that, at bottom, we are trying to interefere with a person’s karma. In Islamic cultures a person is sometimes left to suffer or die on the grounds that it is “Allah’s will”. This seems to me to curiously overlook the obvious point that the existence and skills of doctors and paramedics are also the will of Allah!

Without being judgemental then we can say simply that in the West we are more attracted by the outcome than the process. This surfaces brutally in the maxim that “the end justifies the means” which was used by the communist bloc to oppress the very peoples it claimed to be liberating.

For the avoidance of doubt let me say I deplore this railroad philosophy and those who wish to know my stance should read the major piece I wrote called R-Zones. Intelligent self-enhancement means including the enhancement and protection of all our spheres of responsibility, from one’s inner thoughts, to the biosphere and ultimately God as we perceive it (which links us neatly back to the inner domain).

What we have to do is redefine the game and put things more in our own favour. For avoidance of excessive stress, that means to focus less on the outcome and to enter more into the spirit of the game. It is the process which counts. It is the process of life that I want to focus on for the Renegade Guru series. There is the good life, the poor life and the better life. We only need to improve what we’ve got to start reaping the harvest of good.

If we focus only on the end-game or result, we can only derive significant happiness if the outcome is successful. But if we focus on the quality of the process then we acquire innumerable delightful credits to our coffers of joy on the way there. The final assets may well exceed the lump-sum-on-retirement option!

Think of it like a movie – do we enjoy the whole film or just wake up to see the ending and the rest is irrelevant? Of course not. The experience is the process in the case of this past-time. Think about sex: those who believe the orgasm is the whole experience miss out on much that is wonderful and stimulating.

The English long had an attitude or belief that the game was what counted, not winning. Meaning the quality pride fair-minded and grace you brought to the field of play gave the endeavour a meaningful and enhancing quality, quite independent of the win-lose dichotomy. The person triumphed most who entered best into the spirit of the game.

Now that is gone. Instead we have the philosophy of win-at-all-costs. Guess where this came from? Big Business bucks of course! Sport has been taken over by such commercialism that to win is the only significant outcome. Fortunes are made or lost in the outcomes.

Yet there is no reason why we should allow this crass greed and vanity to invade our private lives and attitudes? It would be wrong, as indeed it is wrong for the spirit of the game, which is what “sport” was originally conceived as.