The Four Enemies to a happy life and how to defeat them - Deepstash
The Definitive Guide to Hygge

Learn more about psychology with this collection

How to create a cosy and comfortable home environment

How to cultivate a sense of gratitude and contentment

The benefits of slowing down and enjoying simple pleasures

The Definitive Guide to Hygge

Discover 37 similar ideas in

It takes just

5 mins to read

The Premise

The Premise

There areย Four Enemies that are obstacles to a happy, fulfilled life.ย One is visible.

The other three concern our feelings and our tendency to self-obsess.ย The answer to all is found in love.

Love is a hugely powerful tool, but it's more complicated than we might suppose.

12

143 reads

Enemy 1: The Outer Enemy

Enemy 1: The Outer Enemy

  • These are the "people, institutions, and situations that mean to harm us"
  • They are the partner who cheated on you, the boss who gave you a warning, or the rain that soaked you to the skin.
  • When dealing with all manifestations of the Outer Enemy, the advice is an old one: love them, and meet hate with love, and enmity with kindness.

13

143 reads

Enemy 2: The Inner Enemy

Enemy 2: The Inner Enemy

  • Anger, hatred, and fear are those emotions that poison our soul.
  • There are three forms of patience: tolerant, insightful, and forgiving.
  • Patience is recognizing the capacity that we all have to just grin and bear it, and appreciating how resilient you are.
  • Forgiving patience is to forgive anyone who harms us, no matter in what way.

12

128 reads

Enemy 3: The Secret Enemy

Enemy 3: The Secret Enemy

  • Our inner voice defines how we orient ourselves to the world.
  • Those who are self-centered experience a "subjective fluctuating happiness," while those who are more selfless experience "authentic-durable happiness," which means a deep "contentment and plenitude or inner peace."

11

116 reads

The Super-Secret Enemy

The Super-Secret Enemy

  • This is the voice that settles for mediocrity, and which sees life as a sad collection of misfortunes, with a few laughs if youโ€™re lucky.
  • The source of this self-loathing is, in some ways, the Secret Enemy. The more preoccupied we are with ourselves, the more we obsess over private happiness.

12

118 reads

All You Need Is Love

All You Need Is Love

Love is the single panacea for all four enemies: it wants what is best for others, and so defuses the Outer Enemy, love is what forgives and accepts and serves as the antithesis of the Inner Enemy: anger, hatred, and fear, love sees others not in terms of what they can do for you but from their point of view, and helps and supports others, which undoes the Super-Secret Enemy

11

105 reads

CURATED BY

rachegraham

Designer graphic

CURATOR'S NOTE

Defeating Hate with Love.

โ€œ

Read & Learn

20x Faster

without
deepstash

with
deepstash

with

deepstash

Access to 200,000+ ideas

โ€”

Access to the mobile app

โ€”

Unlimited idea saving & library

โ€”

โ€”

Unlimited history

โ€”

โ€”

Unlimited listening to ideas

โ€”

โ€”

Downloading & offline access

โ€”

โ€”

Personalized recommendations

โ€”

โ€”

Supercharge your mind with one idea per day

Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.

Email

I agree to receive email updates