Scroll to: Main Content, Navigation , Search.

How to Have a Nice Day

When we set out each morning to interact with the world, we are hopeful that we will have a good day. Achieving that goal depends on two things, serendipity and the conditions in which we find ourselves throughout the day. Since serendipity is by definition beyond our control, our happiness is left to our ability to control the conditions around us – to include those that foster serendipity. Controlling these conditions is a form of problem solving, so the better our problem solving skills, the greater the chance for a good day and a good life.

People who have a good day are not necessarily lucky, wealthy, or smarter. The key to any human success, no matter how you define it, is the ability to control the conditions in which you live such that it assures the best outcome when chance or serendipity enters your life. Since everything that happens is caused to happen, the better we can understand the causes around us, the better we will be at controlling them to a satisfactory end. Controlling these causes is what we call event-based problem solving and to be good at it, we must understand the cause and effect principle.

A fundamental characteristic of the cause and effect principle dictates that for every effect there are at least two causes in the form of actions and conditions. By controlling or establishing the conditions under our terms, we can anticipate random and unwanted actions such that the outcome or effect is beneficial or at least not harmful. For example, the condition of having a better education will provide more opportunities to control more causes resulting in more security and thus more nice days. 

By understanding this simple concept at a philosophical level, it helps us fight the continual barrage of ignorance present in the human condition. Stuff does not just happen and there is no such thing as mystics and magic, only cause and effect. Learn to ask why until you reach your point of ignorance and then look elsewhere until you have a clear causal understanding of the event. The more events you understand at a causal level, the more you will be able to predict the outcome at the beginning of the event and more nice days will follow.

Think causally and have a nice day.