It’s hard to be happy if you’re constantly looking inward. When we focus on ourselves too much, when we live inside our own heads, or even when our ailments occupy more of our time than they should, we suffer. It’s only when we look outwards that we can be happy. Happiness is found externally, in things we do, in stories we hear, in people we talk to, and in places we go to. If you want to be happy, stop reflecting, cease your internalising, and put an end to your ruminations. Instead, call up a friend, listen to some music, read a good book, or watch a good movie. In short, anything to get you away from yourself.

Happiness is a matter of one’s most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. To be damned is for one’s ordinary everyday mode of consciousness to be unremitting agonising preoccupation with self.

Iris Murdoch, The Nice and the Good (1968)