“Happiness is not something readymade. It comes from your own actions.” 

                                                      Dalai Lama XIV

Happiness is something that we are searching around always. Sometime it is like a mirage or an act of chasing a wild goose. The result is an ultimate catastrophe, in search of happiness we are engulfed with more sorrow and misery. We may ultimately start believing that either happiness is not made for us or we are a sort of a miser fellow for whom happiness has no station. During the entire process of our quest for happiness we tend to forget one thing and that is that happiness is nothing but like a warm puppy who needs to be cuddled. We need to realize that we are not the one who is searching for happiness, it is the ultimate goal for which every individual is striving and trying its best to attain the same. However, in our strive to attain happiness many a time we get something which we have never thought of, we get sorrow and misery. We make our happiness a part of our dismal mind-set depending on the materialistic satisfaction and complex depending on the acts of another individual.

Have we ever thought that why we remain unhappy?

Our unhappiness is nothing but the outcome of our wild chase in pursuit of happiness through wrong mean. The very conceptual upbringing of us makes us feel and realise that happiness is something which is externally dependent, true it is stimulus driven and is definitely affected by the external stimuli but we ourselves are responsible for our happiness. Instead, what and where we search our happiness from. We search it among the people who matters us and from among the materials that affects our lives. So basically we determine that our happiness is dependent on the M’s of our life Men and Material while we fail to realise that during our sojourn of life happiness grows, blossoms and dies within us, just like a rose which grows, blossoms and dies within the tree, there it is not externally dependent. It happens every moment but still we seem to be unhappy because we fail to realise that our cause of happiness is us and that our happiness is residing within us and we like fools are searching it somewhere else.

What is happiness for us?

Happiness is a mental state where a person is under a situation in which the positive emotions surpasses the negative and he realises himself to be in a state of ultimate pleasure. Whenever a person is in a state of ecstasy, pleasant mood and increased self-confidence, he is deemed to be happy. It does not mean that a happy person is devoid of any negative emotions but we must know that a person who is having surplus positive emotions can over rid all the negatives of life and can remain happy. The power to subsume the negative emotions by the positivity increases the positive emotions and make one happier.

Where lies our happiness?

I have constantly sermon one thing about happiness wherein I have steadily stated that our happiness is within us and that when our activities matches our thinking and it confirms what we say, thus, lays the foundation of our happiness. Does this means that we ourselves are the cause of our own happiness? Yes, and whatever unhappiness we breed is the outcome of our own internal conflict wherein our negative emotions defeats our positivity. Happiness does not lie in the behaviour of individual around us such as incompatible spouse or too demanding boss. There is no such thing as happily married couple because happiness is an individual trait not depending on the others. It is not necessary that if husband is happy, then wife has to be happy and it is also not necessary that for remaining happily married, the couple has to be happy.

Keys to Happiness

In our desire to happiness, there are certain basic principles which we sometime fail to recognise some of the key points that takes us to the bliss point of happiness. Let me discuss here 6 key point which, if, we follow can take us to ultimate happiness:

1. Healthy life style

The healthy mind in a healthy body is an age old epitome. A healthy mind will always be able to cope up with the negativity building within us and developing the positive mind set which will definitely make us remain happy. Lack of healthy life style will be a bane for an individual and will lead to several complicacy creating within him/her a negative approach and happiness will be far away from him.

      Now, when we speak of healthy life style we should realise that healthy life style is an outcome of healthy diet, physical activity and sound sleep are the key factor that affects the healthy life style. The SAF of ours’ i.e. Sleep, Activity and Food determines our health. When we talk about food, the latest fad in this area is ketogenic diet. The diet that creates ketosis i.e. increased metabolism so that the fats and calories are burn faster together with the fact that it lowers Blood pressure, diabetes and whole lot of disease including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. With keto diet one should try to have at least 7 hrs sleep daily with not more than 20 min power nap. Not to say about physical activity.

Actionable Point

1. Adopt healthy food eating habit like Ketogenic Food or Vegan Food.
2. Involving ourselves in physical activities like exercise, gym etc.
3. Having adequate sleep including a not more than 20 minutes’ power nap in the afternoon.
4.  Be happy with what you are.

  The most important thing that determines our happiness is when we start loving our self and start feeling happy with ourselves. The moment we start comparing with others the negative bull within us would be getting the staple making him stronger and driving away the positivity from within us. The moment we start loving ourselves and what we are, makes our inner self happy which makes the positive bull stronger and keeping negative bull astray. This is not a big job, let whatever might be the day let us just say to ourselves “I love myself, I love what I am and I know I will be what I want”

This is the one mantra, if said thrice a day once when we wake up in the morning, again after a short nap in the noon and finally while we retire to bed at night will definitely kindle a spark within us that will kindle a spark to strengthen the positive bull.

Actionable Point

1. Love yourself and what you are.
2. Use the mantra “I love myself, I love what I am and I know I will be what I want” thrice a day.

• Dream and Create your own goals.

Always remember that it is the dream that keeps our hope alive. In the words of Aristotle “Hope is a waking Dream”. Our dreams are the touchstone of our characters, they led us to the end of our comfort zones. The moment we stop dreaming that very moment we stopped breathing. Life is nothing if we fail to dream but with a condition that our dream should be strong enough that it will not let us sleep till we get our dream. We must realise that every individual has some inner dreams, a dream that one wants to fulfil in his lifetime. True, this very dream forms the goal of an individual which he has to pursue. The moment we realise we have a dream and we can achieve it, that moment we will definitely live and act with the dream in our life. This will not only give us a purpose but will also create an atmosphere where we can move towards our goal. Every moment when we think and proceed towards our goal will be the moment of ecstasy and joy.

      Thus, our dream is what makes us and when we are what we dreamt of would definitely make us happy. Even the entire process of walking towards the path of our goal makes us happy.

Actionable point:

1. Never stop dreaming.
2. Set a goal of your life.
3. Act in accordance to your dream and attain the goal.
4. Keep Learning

Learning is a way to keep us engage and remain curious. It helps us to attain newer and improved knowledge and skill. The learning is not only the tool but is also the ultimate goal for attainment of the ultimate bliss of life i.e. happiness. The continuous process of learning helps to acquire knowledge that equip us with the power that feeds the positive bull that can completely destroy the negativity. The learning process endows us with an insight that boosts within us a sense of accomplishment and an enhanced self-confidence. This provides us with the moment which we call happiness and lays the steps in moving towards happiness. If we really want to remain happy, we have to try for something new and things we have never thought of attaining, this does not mean that we have to get some new academic qualification. It could be new skill or a new sport too or some new adventure such as bungee jumping or river rafting.

Actionable point:

1. Keep learning.
2. Acquiring new skill, sports, academic qualification or getting into new adventure.
3. Forgetting and forgiving the past

Our past is a record of things being done and a meter of experience we have gained from it. It is a mixture of failure and success with a pinch of salt here and there. If we analyse how we deal with our past, we can easily realise that we fail to forget the past and further we fail to forgive the pain giver from our past. We tend to forget that all the incident that occur in our life leaves us with something to learn from. If we keep on clinging with those incident, then we can never move forward which means that ultimately we will fail to attain our goal and our dreams would remain unfulfilled. Don’t let our grey matter ponder on the issues of past, if even after all we feel that there are things we should not never forget in life either a worst decision taken or a best act of benevolence received, write them down don’t let them store in our ROM and make it work slow. If at all they are important in our life, our diary would be handy enough. Our hard disk should store only the things that is required by us today.

Actionable Points:

1. Forget the past and forgive the giver.
2. Writing our experiences and not storing them in our RAM.
3. Living our life in today.
4.  Accepting the fact that we are not superhuman.

Let us accept one vital thing that we are not superhuman and there are many things in this world which we may not do or may be incapable of doing. Why do we ever try to do such thing which we know that ultimately we might not be able to accomplish and failure attained in not doing such thing would ultimately have led us to a state of unhappiness. Superman is not a real character but is a cartoon character, are you a cartoon so that you will jump out and do everything even those beyond your capability. Let’s remember one thing that we can say “No’’ and No is not a taboo word. Let’s not continue saying Yes to everything just to appease our boss or make our family proud of us. If anybody feel that it is very difficult, just shut down your computer after you finish reading this and say No I will not read this anymore. Yes, if you can do this you will not be required to read this article ever after as you have learnt how to remain happy.

Actionable Point:

There is only one shut down of your computer and say No for all those things you believe you cannot/should not do.