Dear Notebookb6:

You can learn from people, what makes them content/ happy, but you cannot easily adapt their ways and be content yourself. You can try this or that specific way, for example, a yoga class if a friend tells you that makes her happy. But an overall attitude, no, you can’t adapt that long term because of your specific childhood experience.

Insight into distressing childhood/ ongoing relationships with your parents, and changing those relationships in the present, are necessary to finding that “key to happiness”.

Maybe your ex boyfriend smiled at times when you complained about issues in your life not related to him because he felt awkward, not knowing what to day. People often smile when feeling awkward, or helpless, not knowing what to say or do.

anita