You feel happy when the world meets your expectations. You feel unhappy when the world doesn’t meet your expectations.

You feel happy when you feel like you know what you’re doing and you feel like you’re doing a good job and making progress. You feel unhappy when you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing, or when you worry that what you’re doing isn’t what you truly want to be doing.

You are unhappy when you feel dissonance.

You are happiest when you’re trying hard, doing your best, and succeeding. Too easy and you get bored, too hard and you get frustrated.

You feel a little bit happy when you’re doing simple, pleasurable things like watching TV, but you’d be happier if you did more challenging things.

When you put all your concentration into mastering something, when you can see measurable progress, when you enjoy doing it so much that you lose track of time — that’s flow.

Do more of what makes you feel flow.

Spend less time worrying about whether you’re doing the right thing and spend more time doing it.