Every living creature wants to be happy. And to be happy, people seek something: money, power or sex, but often even after getting it, they are not happy. Or happiness is very short-lived.
A child thinks he will be happy once he goes to college. Once in college, he thinks he will be happy when he starts earning. Then he thinks he will be happy once he is married. And the story goes on but that special day never comes!
You postpone your happiness until some perfect day in the future, but it never arrives. It’s like making a bed all night but having no time to sleep. Creation wants to see you happy, yet you keep on postponing your happiness.
There are two ways of looking at life. One is where you say, “I will be happy after achieving a certain objective.” The latter being, “I am happy, come what may!” Which one of these do you want to follow?
It’s like the story of a school of fish, who got together to discuss who among them had seen the ocean. None of them could say they had seen the ocean. Then one fish said, "I think my great grandfather had seen the ocean!"
A second fish said, "Yes, I too have heard about this."
A third fish said, "Yes, certainly, his great grandfather had seen the ocean."
So they built a huge temple and made a statue of the great grandfather of that particular fish, saying, “He had seen the ocean. He had been connected with the ocean.’’ Our search for happiness is like that.
What are you waiting for? Instead of preparing to be happy, be happy now and make a resolution to remain naturally happy. For starters, you can try out making a resolution like, “Today, I am just going to be happy come what may. I will not let anything disturb my happiness. I am going to be contented and happy.”
80% Joy 20% Misery
If you look at your own life, you will find that life consists of about eighty per cent of joy and twenty per cent of misery. But when we hold on to the twenty per cent of misery and we end up making it two-hundred per cent of misery! It is not a conscious act but just happens.
Every rainy season in your life has deeply affected you somewhere inside; it has made you grow or given you strength. Along with rains comes a rainbow; they stream colours into your life. And when you come out through the storm, you shine bright like the colours of the rainbow.
Often when dark clouds seem to gather in your life, certain situations might make you think that the end has not come. You can pass through the stormy weather in two ways: either you can groan and cry — or you can sing and dance through it. But when you sing and dance through the rain, you get soaked in the showers of joy.
How to be Happy?
#1: Be in the present moment
In this world, people either dream of happiness (in the future) or remember happiness (from the past.) But they forget happiness and joy can be found only in the present moment. When you are happy in the present moment, the past does not torment you and the tomorrow takes care of itself
#2: Observe your mind
The mind tends to swing back and forth between the past and the future. We either feel regretful or angry about something that has happened to us in the past, or we worry about the way things will turn out in the future. Observe your mind. See how much time it spends on thinking about yesterday or last year or even about when you were a child. When the past is gone and finished, one should not waste their precious time on it? It’s the same when it comes worrying about tomorrow.
One of the simplest steps to happiness is experiencing the power of meditation and Sudarshan kriya. Do it by joining the Art of Living Meditation and Breath Workshop.
#3: Develop the habit of being happy. (Santosha!)
Being happy is a habit which you have to make it for yourself. Nobody else can do it for you. To experience lasting happiness, you have to take a step. Happiness is temporary when it is obtained from anybody or anything.
A strong powerful person is the one who is happy, not the one who has a lot of money.
#4: Don’t brood or complain
Often unconsciously we start being unhappy when there is no reason to be unhappy. Or we keep complaining, “This is no good, that is no good, nothing is good, nothing is okay, I don’t like anything.” Negativity slowly creeps into your subconscious mind, reminding you to chant the mantra of “Oh I am unhappy".
But we need to be cautious and guard our mind and consciousness against being swept away by this sort of negative tendency.
Remember one thing: you are responsible for your own happiness. Come what may keep yourself happy. When you find your happiness within, you find out that it is unconditional.
FAQs
Q: Why don't I feel contented and happy?
Greed takes away contentment. The "I want more, I want more" tendency makes you miserable by making you obsess over it! When you think whatever is required for you, eventually you will get it. You are not disturbed by greed. You should have the faith that it will come to you. So not wanting too much of anything is essential to maintain the balance!
Happiness and contentment come, the only thing you have to ensure is:
1. You are not lazy. When you are lazy and say, "Let happiness come to me", it is not going to come to you.
2. Don't be selfish. When you are selfish, happiness is tough to come by. Saying, "Me, mine, only me" is not going to bring happiness.
3. Don't be greedy. A greedy one will not be happy. If you are greedy and say, "I want more and more and more", you will not be happy
4. People with a feeling of revenge will not be happy. If you want to take revenge on anybody, then you cannot be happy.
Q: It is said that wisdom is to have a smile on your face even in bad times. Should I put on a fake smile? I don't feel very good when I do this.
There is a proverb in America which says, "Fake it till you make it."
In difficult times, you experience pain. I am not saying you should never express the pain which you are experiencing, and fake it with a smile, no! If you feel there is a problem and if you feel like crying, cry. But snap out of it too! What makes you snap out of it is knowledge. What does knowledge do? It brings back the smile.
Wisdom brings the natural smile from within even in tough times. When everything appears to be falling apart, why should you lose your smile? In everybody's life, this happens. Some things that you like happens, some things you don’t like happens. This is part of life. When such things happen, do not blame yourself and get bogged down.
A baby smiles when there is no pain, but an adult can smile even when there is little pain.
Q: For many people, happiness is a transitory joy. I see a movie, I get an insight, or a flash of something and I feel happy. But then something happens and that happiness flies out of the window. What is the way to make this happiness permanent and perpetual?
Knowing that everything else is temporary, and it all fades away. It is in knowing that none of the events are permanent, that all will pass. There is something deep inside you which is a reference point of all the changes in life, and when we get stabilized in that or get a glimpse of it, it makes you unshakable from within.
