The Pursuit
of Happiness
Ashim Kumar Paul
“Being happy doesn’t mean
that everything is perfect. It means you’ve decided to look beyond the
imperfections.”
We always aspire to keep happiness in all
aspects of our life albeit it is not so
simple. It is true that none is happy all the time but there are some people
who are certainly more fulfilled than others. It does not seem that they have
to do much or give a lot of time for being happy. But it is really an easy way one
has to follow in order to be happy. Do not be worried about it. There are some
reasons by following which you can make yourself happy! So let’s cheer up!
Often we become worried and stressed about
the deeds that we may not succeed in. But for the sake of happiness, we must
relinquish this slow poison as stress can cause many mental and physical
difficulties. One of the major causes of stress is to worry about the things
that are out of our control. If we have no preference to do something about
them, we should just leave them. We must assume we are not able of doing all
the deeds. And it will be a wise decision to follow this true acceptance and
keep our mind far from worry as well depression.
Life is surroundeded with happiness and
sorrow. So, everyone has something of sorrow intermingled with the gladness of
life. It is a successful trick to make our laughter outweigh the tears. We
cannot change the past but enjoy today and look to future. If we are prepared
to take ownership for the past and accept that everything that has happened in
our life, good and bad, has made us the person we are, then the battle we are
fighting is, no doubt, half won.
If
you always look toward tomorrow for happiness, odds are you will do the same
when you attain what you’ve been dreaming of. As strange it sounds, the ability
to appreciate what’s in front of you has nothing to do with what you actually
have. It’s more about how you measure the good things in your life at any given
time. Practice wanting what you have and it will feel even sweeter when you
eventually have what you want. Look around—what’s in front of you that you can
enjoy?
Dr. Dacher Keltner of the University of California
claims she can predict a person’s future by judging the strength of their
smile. Researchers examined yearbook photos of 111 female students taken
between 1958 and 1960. Subsequent tests revealed that the women who expressed
more positive emotion in those photos became more mentally focused, had more
successful marriages, and enjoyed a greater sense of well-being. According to
the article, “While positive emotion tends to broaden thought, negative emotion
tends to narrow it and hold back development….The findings of Dr Keltner and
his colleagues, published in the Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, are among the first to show that differences in the extent to
which people express emotion may be stable throughout their lives and dictate
personal and social success.”
Tuning into joy can improve your health, something
that affords you many possibilities in life. It is something that most people
take for granted until it’s compromised. Christopher Peterson, Ph.D of the
University of Michigan—who has studied optimism’s link to health for over 20
years—shows optimistic people have a stronger immune system than their negative
counterparts. This may be due to their tendency to take better care of
themselves. Choose to be happy now and you’ll have more days of good health to
enjoy.
You may think life needs to change dramatically for
you to be the person you want to be. That you can’t be giving
unless you make more money. Or you can’t be adventurous until you sell your
house. The truth is you can be those things at any point in time. So what if you
don’t have money to share. Be generous with your compassion, and listen when
your friends have problems. So what if your house hasn’t sold, pinning you in
one place. Create adventure in your day by trying new things and introducing
yourself to new people. You never know when your now will run out—so ask
yourself, “How can I be that person I want to be in this moment?”
The soaring desires may impede the way of being happy. Have you ever
mused over the fact: how much wealth do you really need to feel good? In the
1980s, political scientist Alex Michalos, professor emeritus at the University
of Northern British Columbia in Prince George, made a study by asking 18,000
college students in 39 countries to rate their happiness on a numeric scale.
Then he queried them about how close they were to having all they wanted. He
came across the fact that the people whose aspirations — not just for money,
but for friends, family, job, health, the works — soared furthest beyond what
they already had, tended to be less happy than those who perceived a smaller
gap. Indeed, the size of the gap predicted happiness about five times better
than income alone. “The gap measures just blow away the absolute measures of income,”
says Michalos. This “aspiration gap” might explain why most people fail to get
much happier as their salaries rise. Instead of satisfying our desires, most of
us merely want more. In surveys by the Roper polling organization over the last
two decades, Americans were asked to list the material possessions they thought
important to “the good life.” The researchers found that the more of these
goods people already had, the longer their list was. The good life remained
always just out of reach.
Habitually, we compare our life and its
achievements with others’. But it is obviously dangerous since it creates no
good but lots of obstacle in the way of being happy. A key component of
happiness is accepting the truth and to learn to be grateful for what we have.
We should, however, accept the gifts we have and know that no one is better
than or less than anyone else’s. It is a good idea to keep a “gratitude
diary” to write down a few things everyday that we are thankful for and
also review the past entries to remind ourselves to be thankful for what we
have and to boost our mood.
When we feel powerless to create happiness
in our life, we should do something to make some near or dear ones happy.
Despite seeming to be impossible, it is not so as we think about. And then, we
shall feel how easy it really can be. Just think about the happiest people we
know are typically the ones who for some foolish reasons are always ready to
give you clothes off their back. Conversely, it is true that the most
discontent people are the ones who are selfish, demanding and inconsiderate of
others. The happiest days of our life when we really dig down deep is when we
see the smile on the face of a person who we care about. Even helping a
stranger can remind us of how much we really have because of how much we can
give.
Imagining is a good way to be happiness.
But we have to have a determined as well as positive imagination. Often caught
by negative criteria may gloom our mind and break the existing happiness down.
We have to be reminded of what we can see as possible is possible. If we dream
something, we can make it real. The only thing stopping us is our thinking and
fear. As soon as you think things can improve and we have the power to change
your mood will be lighter and happiness much closer.
In our world today, we are, in fact,
leading a busy life. We are always busy performing our duties. But we do not,
even, think of ourselves. We cannot give ourselves the time to have a rest that
we need. And it is one of the reasons behind the unhappiness. So, fix a time
just for you to have meditation. Meditation may be a fruitful plan to throw out
our sorrows and make us happy. Sorrow, discontent and stress encircle our mind
and creates melancholy. If we want to get rid of them, we should get ourselves
involved in meditation.
Simply speaking, it may seem to be
difficult but no worries! You do not need to be anxious. Happiness is really
easy to attain in our lives. We, of course, can taste the real pleasure of it
if we do not resort to the hazy, complex sadness as well as agony but accept
those as a part and parcel of our life.
