One process to being happy begins with the idea that everybody has a drug.
Everyone.
Everyone is doing something or someone that is primarily filling multiple needs, many of which it is not suited for, or at best, it is a temporary response to.
You take away the drug, and in the boredom, malaise, struggle, you can identify, for yourself, the component actions which you actually need.
A drug is attempting to solve a multitude of problems with one, long term ineffective solution.
Give me an example, well coffee is one.
Coffee is a stimulant. And some people would think it stops there.
- First wrong thought: Stop drinking coffee, and well, you probably need another stimulant. No, you think you need another stimulant.
What you have is a problem of being too tired.
So what you really need is sleep.
And when you go down that rabbit hole, stop drinking coffee, and figure out you need sleep, then you will not need to drink coffee.
Except, you do.
You still drink coffee.
So, what I would recommend, is really drilling down the sleep thing.
You are still tired because you did not sleep, because you stayed up late playing video games.
So you go to bed early, but you can't fall asleep because you have way too much energy and your brain is going a mile a minute, and you're even a little anxious.
So you then start to journal, and you are less anxious, but you still have stuff to do, so you make a to do list, but you are still too much energy.
So the next day, you exercise, like really hard, and then you are so tired by the time you get to bed that you finally fall asleep early.
Except that it is even more complicated than that for sleep.
Because you realize that okay, but now you are getting enough sleep, because you are waking up naturally before your alarm and at or before sunrise, but... well you 'need' 10+ hours at least a night.
And then you figure out that, well, oh, you can't sleep 10+ hours all the time because you have other stuff to do. And you figure out that you have sleep apnea, or a bad bed.
So then, you figure out, okay I can sleep, 8 hours and still feel rested.
So now, you think, okay, I can stop drinking coffee.
But for some reason, you still drink coffee.
The issue is that coffee is a stimulant, but for some, it may also be a hobby, a break, a nap, an indulgence, a social topic, a way of seeing the world, a holding place for a business aspiration, even a creative outlet.
So, now is where you should feel excitement. Because there is so much other stuff to examine, as to why you need to drink coffee still.
The questions:
1) If coffee can do all those things, isn't it better to just do coffee? No, it is better to have a hobby, to get rest, to actually see the world because it is better, it is real, and frankly, coffee is attempting to do all those things, but it is actually failing at all of them. It is incomplete, and that is why life feels incomplete and dull and small, instead of big, purposeful, and loving and inspring.
2) How long does that take? Depends, how good of information do you have and how quickly can you be self-aware and how quickly can you make effective changes and choices. All in all, it is going to be a long time. For example, the sleep thing, well, I would say it takes months, but that actually will take decades without the key insights I have included.
3) How do you speed it up? Look at the component things I mentioned in #2, but actually, you can start working on multiple fronts at the same time, and I would encourage you to do so.
A life is a life worth living, it is your only chance a life, and you can absolutely do it with whatever resources you have available to you today.
You start, you build, you create, you love, you dream, and you start again.