I do not doubt that it would be easier for fate to take away your suffering than it would for me. But you will see for yourself that much has been gained if we succeed in turning your hysterical misery into common unhappiness.

However, if we can transform our attitude towards suffering, adopt an attitude that allows us greater tolerance of it, then this can do much to help counteract feelings of mental unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and discontent.

Much of what we call evil can often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer's inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight

How to Be Unhappy:

-stay inside all day
-move as little as possible
-spend more than you earn
-take yourself (and life) too seriously
-look for reasons why things won’t work
-always consume, never contribute
-resent the lucky and successful
-never say hello first
-be unreliable

Invert for happiness:

-get outside each day
-move: walk, exercise, dance
-spend less than you earn
-view life as play
-be the one who looks for solutions
-develop a bias to contribute and create
-learn from the lucky and successful
-be the first to say hello
-be reliable

We fatuously hoped that we might pluck from the human tragedy itself a consciousness of a common destiny which should bring its own healing, that we might extract from life’s very misfortunes a power of cooperation which should be effective against them.

our current mental-hygiene philosophy stresses the idea that people ought to be happy, that unhappiness is a symptom of maladjustment. Such a value system might be responsible for the fact that the burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy.

A little misery, at times, makes one appreciate happiness more.

Create all the happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you to add something to the pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains. And for every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall find a harvest in your own bosom; while every sorrow which you pluck out from the thoughts and feelings of a fellow creature shall be replaced by beautiful peace and joy in the sanctuary of your soul.

Treat unhappiness as a defect and fewer would embrace it

Therapy is to make one happy. What is the point of that? Happy people are not interesting. Better to accept the burden of unhappiness and try to turn it into something worthwhile, poetry or music or painting: that is what he been believes.

For any mental or physical pain or suffering, regardless of how severe it might be, can in great part be neutralized by the satisfaction and joy of trying to help others. And that's worth living for.

The best of us can find happiness in misery.

Happiness is having better problems.
Success is having better failures.
Discipline is having better addictions.

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active. That is why it is necessary to happiness that one should be tired.