Happiness is a state of mind, so our miseries and joy come from living in any of the three dimensions of time—past, present and future. Hence, if we wish to live happily, we must learn to remove sufferings not only from the present, but also from the past and future.
Every person who is satisfied, content and happy thinks his understanding of happiness is truest because that is what he is experiencing. So, a virtuous person would subscribe his happiness to his virtuous deeds while an evil person would subscribe his happiness to his vices. Since a corrupt person has never lived a virtuous life, he will possibly never know the euphoria one derives from doing good deeds.
Criticising and condemning others can’t give anyone lasting happiness. Once people fall into the habit of criticising others, they become susceptible to even criticising their own selves as they too are not perfect. The habit of comparing leads to the habit of criticism, which soon leads to self-condemnation, and fills your life with pain and misery.
Wealth is like food. You can’t survive in this world without wealth just like your body can’t survive without food. More wealth, however, does not mean more happiness just like more food does not mean better health.
We start feeling uneasy as soon as the initial euphoria or happiness from our achievement fades away. We then raise the bar further so that we can strive more and achieve even higher success thereby deliberately making ourselves unhappy. However, our lifelong chase of success only gives us suffering and unhappiness.
when you are earning money by doing what you don’t particularly like, there will be an urgent need to buy pleasure and happiness, from the acquired money to justify the pain and suffering you are going through in your work. The more is the suffering in earning the wealth, the greater is the desire of enjoying pleasure from the money so earned.
Most of us believe that wealth is the greatest source of happiness. People sacrifice everything to earn wealth with the hope that it will lead to happiness. Undoubtedly, wealth can provide us with worldly pleasures, comforts, status in the society and even fame, but it is noteworthy that our greatest source of pain is also wealth.
Our mind is working all the time with two goals in sight: first is to minimise the pain and the second is to maximise the happiness. In its attempt to achieve its twin objectives, it is always moving back and forth in the three dimensions of time so that it can heal the pain and bring happiness to the present.
Human lives are so deeply interconnected with each other that we can’t live in this world as an independent person of our own. Everyone in the world is an extension of the self. When others are suffering, we too can’t escape suffering. Our happiness depends on others and their happiness depends on us.
Love and happiness are so intricately connected with each other that they appear to be one. When we have love in our hearts, we relate at a much deeper level with other people and we get loved by them. When we love someone, we care for their happiness more than our own happiness.
Our lasting happiness comes by doing what we are best at. You can know what you are brilliant at only when you discover your potential. If most people remain unhappy throughout their lives, it is because they fail to know their real potential and nurture it to make it a source of joy for themselves. They keep searching for the source of happiness in the outside world, while the real source of happiness is hidden within them.
The freedom to choose is the friend of natural happiness but enemy of synthetic happiness. The best way to create synthetic happiness is, therefore, to restrict your options to as few as you can. Synthetic happiness acts like our psychological immune system and helps us be happy even in adverse situations. We change our views of the world, so we can feel better about the world we find ourselves in. It works best when we’re totally stuck, when we are trapped.
If you keep your pain within your heart, you stand the risk of creating a deep wound in it. And so you must be able to share your deepest pain with people who are very close to you. The very act of sharing it with them reduces its severity. Sharing the pain in public can magnify it 226 | 31 Ways to Happiness since numerous people will be talking about your pain.
Nature ensures joy and pain to everyone. When you are only expecting joy in your life, you can’t handle pain and any painful episode will seem to be even more painful to you. However, when you are mentally prepared for pain, it can’t make you suffer easily. If most people suffer, it is because they are always expecting pleasure and happiness in their life. Hence, when suffering knocks at their door, they are unprepared for it and suffer immense pain.
Eye-for-eye’ policy works well when you are stronger than the one who has hurt you. When your opponent is more powerful than you, ‘offer your other cheek’ law often works better.
When we achieve success at any given point of time, we have a tendency to further the goalpost and therefore we keep chasing the illusion of happiness throughout our lives.
When we see the world superficially, we see individuals who appear independent of each other. We fail to see through our senses how deeply connected we are with each other at the spiritual level.
Just like every serving of food has an effect on our body, every thought has an effect on our minds. Just like a single bite of harmful food can ruin the health of our body, a single negative thought can ruin the peace of our mind.
While failure is important for success, take only as much failures as you can afford to, without losing all your happiness. Failing more than what you can withstand is a recipe for suffering.
Once we understand that our happiness is the result of our life experiences with the world, we will also understand the importance of taking care of both our external and internal world. We can’t be happy if our children are unhappy, our spouse is unfaithful or if our boss hates us. It is futile to focus just on internal changes and hope to attain long-lasting happiness.