Over the years, I’ve worked with thousands of patients from diverse backgrounds. Many share something in common: They want to be happier. 

If you hear “I want to be happy” enough times, it’s only natural to wonder what that word really means, even if you’re not a psychiatrist. I am a psychiatrist, and I want to do everything I can to help my patients. 

But here’s the thing: When I was training for this work, we didn’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about or studying what I now see is a major reason many people seek out a psychiatrist in the first place. We focused on specific illnesses, such as major depressive disorder or generalized anxiety disorder, but we didn’t really learn how to help patients find happiness. 

So, I started looking into it. 

What I found is that there are different types of happiness. There’s hedonic happiness — the euphoria we feel when something good happens, such as having a child or getting a promotion. 

Then there’s something called eudemonia, which is more aligned with fulfillment. It’s about finding peace and contentment. Fulfillment is sustainable; it can help us live healthier lives instead of chasing those hedonic highs. 

Finding Fulfillment 

My research led me to define three components of fulfillment: being okay with who you are, being grateful for what you have and being optimistic about the future. 

Being okay with who you are stems from self-love and compassion. Studies, and anecdotal experience from the patients I’ve worked with, show that self-compassion can reduce stress and help people move closer to peace. 

Being grateful for what you have is powerful in tangible, measurable ways. Research on gratitude journaling has shown improvements in heart rate variability, a marker of stress. In other words, gratitude isn’t a platitude; it literally affects your heart. 

Lastly, being optimistic about the future directly impacts your health. Studies show that people who are future oriented — even when life is difficult — are more protected against certain mental illnesses and suicide. 

Fulfillment was the focus of a TED Talk I gave last year, titled “It’s Time to Kiss Happiness Goodbye.” As you can imagine, some people weren’t too happy about this initially. 

While preparing for it, I called my dad. His reaction was simple: “Don’t do it.” 

“Why would you ever want to tell people that they shouldn’t strive to be as happy as they could possibly be?” he asked me. 

Don’t get me wrong. I hear what he’s saying. Even in clinical encounters, when I suggest that happiness might not be the ultimate endpoint, 90% of my patients say, “What are you talking about?” But if they think about it, if they go a little deeper, the response is overwhelmingly productive. 

The same was true of my TED Talk. 

Fulfillment isn’t about chasing the next dopamine hit. It’s not about the next promotion you may not even want or the next social media “like.” We may be addicted to hedonic happiness — always fiending for the next rush. But fulfillment asks something different of us. 

It asks us to sit with discomfort. 

We live in a fast-paced culture that encourages instant gratification. But some of the most meaningful growth happens when we don’t run from uncomfortable feelings. Forgiveness, for example, is often thought of as a religious term, but there’s science behind it. In psychiatry, we talk about trauma processing. There’s an aspect of forgiveness to that — acknowledging that something painful is part of your story but it doesn’t define who you are. 

Studies also suggest that people who describe their lives as fulfilled are not the ones living with deep regret. That doesn’t mean nothing painful happened. It means they’ve learned to say, “Maybe that wasn’t the best thing, but this is what I learned from it.” 

That perspective has shaped my own life. 

Our Most Valuable Asset 

Several factors influence our relationships, but perhaps the most important is time. 

Time, and how we choose to spend it, shapes our relationships, and the quality of our relationships ultimately shapes our fulfillment. The Harvard Study of Adult Development — the longest scientific study on happiness — concluded that the quality of our relationships is the most important factor in achieving well-being. 

But relationships aren’t simple. Many people are struggling with loneliness. Many marriages end in divorce. You can’t just tell someone, “Have good relationships.” It’s more complicated than that. That’s something I’m spending a lot of time thinking about now. 

At the end of the day, whether I’m teaching medical students at the University of Houston’s Tilman J. Fertitta Family College of Medicine, writing for outlets such as Men’s Health or sitting one-on-one with a patient, I see my role as the same. The word “doctor” comes from the Latin word docere, which means “to teach.” I’m trying to teach — to help people understand that medications are useful and often necessary, but they’re not the entire puzzle. 

In my teaching, I’ve found that, if we dig a little deeper, what most people ultimately want is to live a peaceful life. They want to wake up without feeling constant pressure to live up to expectations, whether they come from society, family or themselves. 

Fulfillment isn’t always flashy. But it’s healthy. 

It’s about learning to be okay with who you are, grateful for what you have and optimistic about what comes next. 

And that’s a life well lived.