The Art of Happiness

One of the things that everybody living today, in the past, and in the present strives for is happiness. This has been reiterated in books and movies and has even resulted in the saying that somebody is busy with the pursuit of happiness. However, happiness is still an elusive thing to many people due to the stress and loneliness of life. Below are some tips in your search of true happiness to help you along the way.

Me first

Many of us spend a majority of our time trying to make others happy. This could be due to the fact that we are scared that if we don’t, the people we are trying to make happy will reject us and we will find ourselves alone and without anybody that we can rely on. While we do need to help others in their search of happiness, we need to worry about ourselves first.

We will never truly be able to make others happy if we are battling with unhappiness ourselves. This comes down to the analogy of ‘fix yourself before you fix others’. If you are stressed, unhappy, and unsatisfied, you will not be effective in encouraging or cheering up others. While you may help them slightly, you will be doing it from a place in yourself that, to an extent, does not believe what you are telling others due to the fact that you are not seeing the results of your advice in your own life.

Get over it

One of the biggest things that drain our happiness is the fact that, as humans, we tend to hang onto things. This could be something that somebody else has done to us that hurt us, something that didn’t happen that we were expectant about, or even something that we just wish we could change and yet do not have the opportunity or knowledge to do.

While it is much easier said than done, dwelling on things like this drains our happiness and pulls us deep into the abyss of self-pity and despair. You’ve probably heard the saying ‘you cannot control the situation, however, you can control your reaction to the situation’. This statement holds some truth. When hurting, it is hard to let go of things, but when you realize how much joy those things are stealing from your life, you will see that it is even harder to continue to hold on to them.

Your life, your opinion

The opinions and perceptions of others is one of the things internationally that does the most damage to peoples’ happiness. This is due to our inherent need for acceptance and validation from others. However, we become dependent on other people’s opinions of us to the extent that we give up on the pursuit of searching for who we are and what makes us happy and instead focus on what others want and what will bring us the highest level of acceptance.

You were born as you are for a reason. If somebody that you are trying to impress does not like it, don’t let it become your problem. There will be other people who you will click with more easily who will be more than willing to accept you as you are. Search for those people.

With these 3 simple things, you can start doing things because you want to do them.