What if happiness wasn’t a mystery? What if it was actually a formula? I’ve sat with countless people, helping them set goals and map out their futures. We talk about better relationships, more money, career changes, and health goals. And when we dig deep enough, past the surface-level wants, we always arrive at the same destination: happiness. It’s what we’re all really after. So, let’s stop treating it like a lucky accident and start looking at the mechanics of it. Because there is a formula for happiness. And unfortunately, there are formulas for unhappiness and suffering, too.

The Blueprint and the Conditions

Here’s the simple, powerful formula: Happiness is when your life conditions match your blueprint.

Your blueprint is your internal map—your idea of how things should be. Your life conditions are your external reality—how things actually are. When those two things line up, you experience happiness. When they don’t, you experience unhappiness.

The Path to Suffering

So, we have unhappiness: life conditions not matching the blueprint. But how do we get from unhappiness to full-blown suffering? Suffering is what happens when your life conditions don’t match your blueprint, and you feel like there’s nothing you can do to change it.

I had a work colleague who was in a job he hated. He was assigned to a specific role in a specific place, and he was miserable. He felt trapped. He would say things like, “I have to do this. I don’t have a choice.” Because he believed he had no power to change his situation, he wasn’t just unhappy; he was suffering. He was angry at his bosses, angry at the company, angry at the work. He was stuck in a cycle of blame.

When we feel stuck, we usually do one of two things: we blame, or we ignore. We can blame events, other people, or ourselves. Notice what happens when you blame yourself—you beat yourself up. Your energy drops. Your capacity to actually solve the problem shrinks. This feeling of powerlessness is what turns unhappiness into suffering. Denial is the other trap. We ignore the problem, hoping it will go away. It might provide short-term relief, but it’s a terrible long-term strategy.

The Two Levers of Change

The good news is, you are never truly powerless. The foundation of an empowered life is this: you have the power to change anything in your life at any time. There are only two levers to pull. You can either:

1. Change Your Perception. Or,
2. Change Your Procedure.

That’s it. If you want to transform your life, you pull one or both of these levers.

Changing your perception is about working on your mindset. It’s about looking at the situation with fresh eyes. When something bad happens, our instinct is to look at it through the eyes of pain and loss, which only makes it worse.

Changing your procedure is about taking new action. If what you’re doing isn’t working, stop doing it. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. You need new input. You need a coach, a mentor, or a new course. You need to increase your knowledge and find new ways to approach the problem. By applying new ideas and taking new actions, you will get new results. You break the vicious cycle by doing something different.