People have different tastes, aspirations, dreams and philosophies. Each directed toward one single goal, the pursuit of happiness. Our actions and functions are relentlessly striving to find the happiness that we all deserve and aspire. Our social fabric is made out of elements that are designed to promote and propagate happiness out of the resources that we all have and care about. Despite, all the tools and elements, wealth, education, as well as our family and social environment, most of us go through the rigors of life with all kinds of troubles and tribulations, without much concessions. That is the time it gets more and more difficult to feel or enjoy or even experience happiness. The daily drudgeries of life teamed with frustrations and gaps between achievements and aspirations make it more difficult to experience that feeling. Notably, the complex and material nature of our social lives have made the situation even worse. However, if we are positively optimistic and determined enough, it is quite possible to achieve happiness by identifying the things and people that influence our mental state creatively and constructively. Ironically, most of the times, all those elements and ingredients are around us, but due to our weaknesses, fragile egos, myopic view points and prejudices, we fail to recognize them.
Happiness is a relative term as well as an individual experience, and therefore significantly depends on person’s individual persona, beliefs, awareness and their general attitude toward life. Significantly, happiness in most cases depends primarily on the thought pattern of each person, their perceptions, expectations and environment around them. This primarily means, one person’s source of happiness could be another person’s source of misery. However, despite all these complexities, happiness is truly achievable and not necessarily dependent on one’s financial or social status. However, sound financial and social status could make life much more comfortable and presentable, but whether it helps someone achieve ultimate happiness is still debatable.
Factors that can help us achieve happiness:
Like minded company: When we keep the company of people who think in a similar way, there are less chances of conflicts and therefore the outcome of social experiences would be much more pleasurable. With likeminded people, it is much easier to agree on variety of issues, thus causing less disagreements to deal with and more positive reinforcements. People with positive mind frame create positive environment, thus creating happy situations for themselves as well as people around them. Likeminded people share same thoughts and have similar interests in variety of life situations such as marriage, birth, politics, employment and so on. Therefore to experience happiness, it would be wise to befriend likeminded personalities and enjoy the happy moments discussing similar topics and thoughts.
Organized and beautiful home and office: Organized homes and offices create the feel of harmony, simply because we all prefer to see things in order, and when we are surrounded with that sense of arrangement and organization at home and at work, our mind produces signals of harmony, and gives us the feeling of happiness. According to many studies an organized home and desk in office increases our efficiency. Disorganized way of life creates a feeling of chaos and therefore makes us feel the same.
Happy people: Happy people make other people happy and make the atmosphere more relaxed and light for everybody to lighten up and enjoy, on the contrary, people with grim and negative attitudes and sad demeanor would do quite the opposite. People with positive and happy attitudes talk and share stories about their joyful experiences, and thus influence the thought patterns of their company as well. If we are regularly exposed to happy and joyous stories and examples, we do start believing in them and, it does affect us in a most positive way and also confirms that thought of happiness does have a positive effect on us.
Happy beverages: Beverages could be quite stimulating in triggering feel good elements in our mind. Any kind of beverage tea, coffee, alcohol, water is capable of providing us some relaxed and laid back time in our day to day lives and enable us to enjoy some quality and peaceful time for self-reflection. This allows us to recount our day’s events and beautiful memories from the past and feel good about it. There is no better way to recount our good memories but with the beverages that we love. A hot cup of chamomile tea is a good way to relax, which can stimulate happiness. That being said, all beverages especially alcoholic beverages could be addictive, therefore should be consumed moderately and responsibly.
Love, bonding and togetherness (family and friends): The most significant part of human existence is family system, without which we are at the risk of exposing our vulnerabilities to everybody. Family could be a great support system to us by simply providing us love, comfort and security that we all require in order to function in the society. Family can be a great place to find and experience happiness and further our dreams with the love and support of the soundest system on the planet. It should be noted that, people who unfortunately do not have the sound support system of their families are subjected to much misery, failures and discomfort. Unquestionably, a sound and happy family is a perfect place for happy existence. We all like to love, bond and enjoy the feeling of togetherness with the people who play those specific roles in our lives, such as our partners, children, siblings, friends and parents. This mantra of relationships in terms of bonding and togetherness has been quite instrumental in shaping our evolutionary path. The prospect of being loved and the desire to love others gives us this unprecedented and incredible power like no other, creating a foundation for happy existence. The more our hearts are filled with the feelings of love and togetherness the happier we would feel in any situation. This is a proven way of living and there is no denying the fact that a sound and loving family system is the most significant reason behind our happiness.
Vacation and recreation: Vacation and recreation basically implies a break from our usual routine life. Occasional break from our day to drudgeries and monotonies can make a remarkable impact on our happiness quotient. Vacations can take us away from our daily pressures and put us in a much relaxed and comfortable atmosphere, thus making us feel happier. That is the main reason nowadays even at work place, companies and organizations have introduced regular breaks from work to reduce the monotony of work and increase the efficiency of the workers. Efficiency has a direct relation with the happier and relaxed mental state. Vacations do not have to be expensive but relaxing, which could take place even at home once we manage to remove ourselves mentally away from our work and usual schedules.
Appreciation and recognition in our social Eco system: It’s human nature to long for credibility and appreciation from the society that we are a part of and from the family which defines our personalities and individualities. When we get the recognition for our human endeavor and individuality, it becomes a source of self-gratification and eventually a great source of our happiness. In the absence of appreciation and recognition from the family and society, people could experience lower self esteem and dejection, which could lead them toward downward spiral of despair. Validation of our actions and achievements are two major contributory factors in the pursuit of happiness. When we get respect for who we are rather than who we should be, we reciprocate the same feeling of respect and acceptance to others. This theory is also in line with having likeminded people around, people who could understand and respect us for our beliefs and philosophies. Pointedly, recognition brings sense of achievement and success thus stimulating enormous amount of happiness to individuals irrespective of their age and gender.
Money and health: Descent and comfortable amount of money and good health is the key to our ultimate happiness. It is but truth that in the absence of both, life gets more challenging and difficult to bear. Money without health and health without money could cause much of the woes that we deliberately try to avoid and we work so hard for. One in the absence of the other, deprives us from all the worldly pleasures, which is necessary to enjoy our life to the fullest. It should be pointed out, that too much money and too bad health, both could be detrimental toward our goal of happiness. However, money can buy material comforts only, and in no way guarantees us the happiness that we are seeking. Absence of good health on the other hand with money or without could be a perpetual cause of our despair.
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Hobbies: We all possess, some or the other kind of talent, which we call hobby. Hobbies are mostly pursued to keep us engaged and expand our creative talent, which otherwise would have gone unexplored. It includes painting, dancing, cooking, singing, photography, mountaineering, scuba diving, sports, gardening writing and so on. These activities have the ability to make us experience things outside our daily routine and therefore are immensely significant in the pursuit of our happiness. It enables us to experience self-realization and stimulates personal growth. With personal growth we feel empowered and see world with more positive outlook and true sense of achievement. Personal self growth helps in expanding the latitude of our knowledge and creates a positive and more progressive world view and sense of achievement. These liberal pursuits are extraordinarily constructive way of making use of time and definitely make us feel happier when we spend our energy pursuing them. Personal self growth is an investment of time on ourselves, where we have the luxury to do things without being guided by deadlines.
Food: Food is a center around which the entire social aspect of human existence clusters. It is one of the most important reasons, which enables socialization and friendship. For every event that we plan and organize, food occupies the center stage. A good food with friends and family is the reason behind most of our joyous celebrations. It is quite amusing to know that when people feel low or depressed, they resort to food, particularly comfort food. However, too much indulgence with food could lead to unhealthy consequences and later could fill us with guilt and anger but undoubtedly, at the time of consumption it has the power to make people feel happy and content.
Self-contentment: Self-contentment is a power that can make any person with meager material possessions feel happy and content. In fact the notion and practice of self-contentment is so powerful that if we all start incorporating self-contentment into our lives, half the miseries of the world would just disappear. Self-contentment primarily means being happy with our surroundings as well as our emotional, physical and material possessions. For example, if we are happy with what we have would make us much happier rather than, constantly being worried about things that we don’t. Constant comparison with other people and their achievements completely fogs our own achievements thus making us miserable. Whether, we accept it or not but most people today suffer from “competing with the Joneses syndrome”, adding much to their already existing trauma. It should also be pointed out, that continuously looking out for things and people who are not, and would never be the part of our lives is the greatest cause of sadness and loneliness in modern times. Being worried and seeking irrelevant materialistic ends and emotional pleasures are the root cause of much unhappiness around us. If we are willing to accept our current realities and make ourselves more involved with our lives positively the chances of experiencing happiness increases manifold.
Positive reinforcements: It is all about, whether the glass is half full or half empty! We all have different ways of looking at things. The more we condition ourselves with positive viewpoints the easier it would be to enjoy our realities. If we are continuously focusing on discrepancies and drudgeries of life the less chances we give ourselves to enjoy the things and people that we have around us. Happiness can be practiced by using positive psychology and positive self-talks. It depends entirely on us whether we want to say the glass is half full or half empty. If we are thankful and show our gratitude for the small accomplishments and relationships that are around us, the more positive and joyful situations would occur and therefore we would be able to derive more satisfaction from our surroundings. Positivity is not served on a platter but requires hard thinking and optimism to keep our eyes on the bright side of the events rather than desperately desiring and longing for objects, that we do not have control over. To be in control of our lives we must think positively in any situation. Positivity is the power that we need to harness in order to enjoy the little things of life to fulfill and appreciate bigger realities of life.
Nature: For some, including myself experiencing nature in its grandeur, beauty and magnificence gives enormous amount of joy, full of gratitude. Nature in its imperfection and harmony is so transcendental, that it can be therapeutic for many people. With the growing urbanization and complex modern living, many more people are resorting to nature to lessen the impact of stressful living and chaos that is suffered by our mind and body. Due to speedy increase in the pace of life and complex work and home situations, we are under tremendous mental and physical stress for most part of the day. Stress is an unhealthy way of life which saps us from our vitality and energy. In order to reclaim that vitality, we do need to take an attempt to break that monotony. Nature walks, trekking, rock climbing or just spending few days amidst nature could be quite a constructive and exciting experience for many people. Beauty and glory of nature, fragrance and vibrancy of flowers have the ability to create positive impressions on our minds which helps in the release of endorphins thus helping us feel good. A beautiful sight is a happy sight and happy feeling.
Volunteer work: Although, it’s not much talked about, but people who care about unrelated people and organizations on a humanitarian level derive plenty of happiness and contentment out of their volunteering work. Taking care of lonely, unwell, destitute and helpless can and does have a positive impact on many of us. It’s a selfless and noble work which makes people understand and see life much closely therefore they tend to appreciate it more. A person helping a destitute or sick understands the value of life and tries to be more appreciative of their own lives and are more zealous about seeking and experiencing joy compared to those who take life for granted and feel entitled.
Big events: Events such as marriages, birthdays, graduations, felicitations, promotions, new relationships and occupational successes also have the potential of making people experience happiness, even if it is for brief period of time. Some of the events do lead to lifelong happiness and some don’t. However, all these events do create happiness and excitement in our lives and stimulate good feelings. For example, marriage can be a lifelong happy event, if it is filled with love, loyalty and friendship, but if the same marriage results into divorce, that would cause us great despair and leave us distraught for a significant period of time and maybe a permanent scar on our emotional wellbeing. A child’s birth and graduation on the other hand also influence the sense of happiness for many more years. If we learn to appreciate the big events of our lives, we would definitely be in much happier state.
Meditation: Meditation has the capacity to change our inner wellbeing from inside out. A few minutes of meditation and self-reflection in the peace and quiet of our surroundings can have a tremendous positive impact on our emotional and mental health. Considering, so many people these days fall prey to the mental health issues, it is all the more important to incorporate meditation and yoga in our daily routine. Meditation regenerates and renews our thought process slowly but permanently. It is an important step toward reclaiming our lives which is enormously under the grip of stress and loneliness. Meditation highlights the significance of mind over matter and thought over things. It also helps us in process of achieving self-expression and self-reflection, key factors in the pursuit of happiness.
Conclusively, happiness is not a scarce commodity but a feeling, that is absolutely achievable and much of it depends on our thought process and the manner in which we define our lives and ourselves. It is always around us in our actions and expressions, but we fail to recognize it. From time to time we do experience happiness because that is the time we allow ourselves to recognize it and appreciate it. Happiness is not limited to privileged few or wealthy, but it’s for everybody who are determined to find it in their surroundings and enjoy it with all the exuberance and enthusiasm whenever they could. In order to experience the happiness and joy we must be determined to make few changes in the way we live and conduct ourselves in society. Surely, that would be the first step toward pursuit of happiness. Not appreciating and respecting the factors that stimulate happiness is nothing less than self-defeating. Being happy is a deliberate choice, a kind of consciousness that is omnipresent, waiting to be identified, nurtured and experienced. Whether we see the beauty of rose or the thorn that it has, is completely our own choosing. We are at the liberty of choosing and appreciating either the roses or the thorns, but we also know what a difference it would make if we are more appreciative of roses for their beauty and not being critical for the sharpness of the thorns. It is the best idea to enjoy the beauty of roses, being aware of its thorns. Therefore, life can also be appreciated for the best and most attractive elements that it has to offer, keeping in mind that there would be unpleasant events in the course of life and we must pick the best possible elements to achieve happiness and appreciation of life. Convincingly, I would conclude, life is not about what is ugly but about what is beautiful and happy. There is no dearth of beauty, if we are looking. We just have to find it.
Happiness is a by product of all the right thoughts, judgements, actions and decisions. In the absence of above factors, life becomes a constant struggle. The bottom line is, to think, judge, act and take your decisions wisely. “Happiness”, will then be “the constant”, of your life.
Sangeeta Rana
