The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions. — Robert Louis Stevenson
Are you waiting for someone to tell you to be happy? It is wrong idea. Make good choices and make the most of them. Feeling happy is continuous process and there is hardly any end of happiness if you can cultivate the habit. Happiness is inside job.
Do Not Postpone Happiness
If I have an idea that I will work very hard today so that I will be happy tomorrow then it is totally wrong idea. I can be happy now or never. You may be thinking to earn lot of money so that you can lavishly spend after few years, you are wasting your precious time. Suppose you strive to earn good money for few years and earn lot of money what about the lost years which were without good time or happy moments. The time is precious luxury. It is not going to come back whatever way you spent.
Let the time do its work, you have to be busy in your schedule. The schedule which is right for giving you instant happiness. You are taking up some exercise and think that you will enjoy relaxing when you finish your exercise is little wrong kind of concept. You can enjoy time relaxing when you finish your exercise but why can’t you enjoy both the status. If you become habitual of enjoying your pain, there is no end of happiness. So, make it a principle regarding happiness, “It is now or never!”
How Can You Discover Your Happiness?
Delayed gratification is ok. But how long you can prolong for that delay. That end result may or may not give you happiness later. If there is a storm and lightening, enjoy the sound and be happy because you are going to get the rain and you will dance in the rain. Do not be upset that it will rain and I can not go out for a specific job. Today when I wanted to go for early morning walk, I thought I will extract lot of oxygen for my body and jot down few ideas for my writing but the moment I stepped out of the home, it started raining heavily. I shifted my focus and opened doors and windows of my sitting room and started writing this particular article. Let it rain. In fact, I reminded my brain and gave challenge to all difficulties to be alert, I am ready to face them and that to not with a sad or stressful mind. If your body muscles or bones are paining, think that it is developing. In the worst case also, it is your attitude that gives you desirable feeling of happiness.
What Is Your Attitude About Happiness
I am reminded of the Chinese lady who had two young sons. One was selling umbrella and another was selling goggles. When there was no rain, she was worried that umbrellas will not be sold and his elder son will not get any sales. When there was no sun light, she was miserable that his younger son will not get any sales for the goggles. The stressful situations in both the cases caused to convert her mental health to worse state.
When she happened to meet a monk, she was very happy with a couple of sentences from him. He explained to lady to change the way of thinking and replace negative attitude with positive one. Later on, she started thinking that when there is rain, my elder son is going to earn lot of money. And when there is sun light my younger son is going to get very good sales. Matter of selling is same in both the cases but do you find happiness in every adverse situation? We simply quit to accept happiness even with the negative kind of thinking.
Write down the worries each day for at least 10 to 15 minutes and put it in the drawer of your cupboard and forget it. If you are again reminded by a couple of new worries, open the drawer, write down and shut the drawer and forget for rest of the day. But for heavens sake, do not sit on the thorn. By the time you open the drawer next morning to write about new worries, most of the worries which were written yesterday must have vanished. So simply replace your negative thoughts with a couple of positive thoughts. Negative thoughts are much more powerful than your positive thoughts and therefore you have to replace negative thoughts with adequate number of positive thoughts.
Is Your Happiness Same For Somebody Else?
Your itch is your itch. You are scratching you own each, it has nothing to do with somebody else. Your satisfaction for your happiness is right for you and not for anybody else. Even in the case of pain, it is true. You have acute tooth ache and your friend said that there was terrorist attack and two people killed. You are literally not much interested about killing although undesirable things happened. You are mostly focussed on tooth ache because it is your own.
You can define happiness with thousand different ways and means but ideas must have not worked for your situations although emerging thoughts from others may be worthy.
Key Take Away
1. You can learn to be happy in any damn situation.
2. True happiness always comes from within.
3. Remind yourself in difficult times too that you can enjoy.
4. Your own happiness is the best medicine.
5. It is matter of habit to be happy but fake it until you make it.
