Living a happy life is a lifestyle. Moments of happiness can be a lifestyle. Happiness has a manner. In order to attain it you must live, reset and live again. Its just that simple!
“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.” Marcus Aurelius, the last of Rome's 5 good emperors.
Unknowingly, the hassles of day-to-day life have conditioned us to think that happiness has a 'secret' we must know in order to have it. We tend to think that it is 'all the way out there' and not right here within us. And so we are discouraged in our pursuit of happiness because it appears to us as impossible and unattainable.
James Oppenheim, a remarkable poet once said "The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.”
Many a times we think that acquiring and accomplishing things will satisfy our lives with bliss. How can this be when happiness is found as close as within ourselves? We look for it on the outside. Hence we tend to outsource happiness from possessions, circumstances, people, substances, work, media, status...the list goes on.
“It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.” Dale Carnegie.
Take this time to focus on you right now. What does happiness look like to you? Picture yourself living as the happy-you. Really, pause from the hullabaloo that goes by names such as work, financial concerns, uncertainty and pretty much all worries that weigh you down. Define and envision true happiness, yours.
Often when we do so, we see the smiles we share and laughs we have. We visualize a new life, the life of your dreams. Where all is sublime and warm sunny days never end. But there are somethings we omit from our dreams and these are the realities needed for them to exist.
But did you also think of how you attain happiness? Did you pace through the steps you took to reach such a state? Very rarely we answer 'yes'. If we do think of it, often we didn't do it enough to make us make a difference.
The Dalai Lama spoke these words: “Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions.”
See our dreams paint a picture for us so easily but in order to bring them to life we require a canvas, paint, brush and time. Meaning to say, don't expect happiness to just slip from your mind and fall into your life on its own. A conscious effort is required from you for as long as your life lasts.
All this is at the foundation of finding happiness, the base on which it stands. Understanding this will determine how much of it you can build on your life and how long it will last. Now that you know, lets pause right there and reflect.