Secret of Happiness

Happiness is emotional or mental state of being associated with positive or pleasant emotions or feelings, ranging from contentment to deep joys. Philosophers and religious thinkers often define happiness in terms of living a Good Life, or flourishing, rather than simply as an emotion. Happiness can mean different to everyone, like Life people define it different likewise everyone have different definition of Happiness according to their own experience of life. For some Happiness may be define as pleasure, accomplishments, relationships, since everyone see happiness in different context from other person.

In Buddhism Happiness is complete freedom from suffering, ultimate happiness only achieved by overcoming the desire for unwanted materialistic things in life. Many European culture define happiness as good fortune, but in Catholicism and Islam the ultimate happiness can be achieve not in this life but life after. Likewise Judaism mentions that one need to be happy to serve god well.

Happiness is really a state of mind, a habit some born with it and some have to choose it.  One of the research shows that human mind focused more on negative experience than positive, but by simply shifting perspective from negative to positive will make a person far happier. So what is really happiness and what is the secret of happiness, is that simple that everyone can be happy?  The answer is yes as again according to Buddha teaching “Happiness comes within you not from external factors”.

External factors are more linked with desires rather than true happiness. For example is a person who is unhappy say to himself if I have this car I will become the happiest person, so the person desire this car. Once the person gets this car he/she will be happy for few days then after that he will be back to same unhappy state. In other words, he happiness linked with desire are not lasting happiness. So what is the true happiness and how to achieve, true happiness can be achieve my taking small steps in everyday lives.  To start being happy we can always show kindness and gratitude to others around us, spending time in nature, healthy eating habits, learn to forgive and let go things and people which no longer serves us and only build negative emotions.

Try to focus on what went right within wrong. Involve oneself in activities which connect mind and body such as exercise, meditation, yoga, prayers. Making all these little things part of your daily routine life style will help to be positive and thus leads to happiness.

My own personal experience and exercise which I do often when going through negative emotions is, I let my negative emotions flow within for few minutes approx ten minutes. Then I question myself: well is it worth it to keep these emotions or thinking about it. The answer is always no, as negative emotions leads to stress rather than solution. I change this emotion into positive using any tools that can lead me to positive thinking or positive state of mind. In NLP it is often called Anchoring which means choosing a tool which divert your attention from negative terms and take you into positive state of mind. This could be anything from a smell of bread to your favourite song anything that individual has happy connection in past, and thinking about that bring smile on one face.

So in conclusion Happiness can’t be find in materialistic things but rather in your own state of mind, yes we can use money or other desirable products as a tool but not the reason of our lasting happiness.

Stay blessed and keep smiling and showing kindness to others around you. Much Love