The pursuit of happiness
WHAT IS HAPPINESS?
It is a difficult question to put into words but I’ll do my best to explain it in this blog post.
Maybe we don’t need a definition; we know it when we feel it, as a series of positive feelings as joy, contentment, peace, gratitude, love, and well being with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful and worthwhile.
But why happiness is important?
In addition to making us feel very good happiness improves many aspects of our lives:
1. It’s good for our health: happy people are less likely to get sick and they live longer
2. It’s good for our relationships: happy people are more likely to get married and have fulfilling marriages plus have more friends
3. Happy people make more money and are more productive at work
4. People that are happy are more generous and altruistic
5. Happy people cope better with stress and trauma
6. They are more creative and are better able to see the big picture.
Happiness is something everyone wants to have. You may be rich and successful but without happiness it will be meaningless. A common definition of happiness is: a state of well being and contentment, a pleasurable and satisfying experience.
Here are some definitions by the greatest minds in history:
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. – Mahatma Gandhi
Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. – Ayn Rand
Happiness is something that you are and it comes from the way you think. – Wayne Dyer
Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence. – Aristotle
Happiness is not station you arrive at, it is something you remember. – Margaret Lee Runbeck
Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.- Denis Waitley
PERSONAL NATURE: HAPPINESS IS A NATURAL GUIDE
Success is not the key to happiness.
Happiness is the key to success.
If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
Happiness feels good because it is nature’s way. It is well known that when you laugh and are happy, your body releases positive chemicals and endorphines that help to keep you well. If something makes you feel happy it is natural to do it. That is how our brain works, it is natural. It is only natural to seek out what makes you happy and spend your time there. What makes you happy is different from what makes other people happy and that it is fine. Imagine if everyone wanted to do the same job, marry the same person, have the same lifestyle and live in the same place – what a nightmare! It is natural for us to seek out what comes naturally to our own personal nature. There are also materialists, who are more likely to overspend and have credit problems, possibly because they believe that acquisitions will increase their happiness and change their lives in meaningful ways. Thinking about acquisition provides momentary happiness boosts to materialistic people, and because they tend to think about acquisition a lot, such thoughts have the potential to provide frequent mood boosts, but the positive emotions associated with acquisition are short-lived. Although materialists still experience positive emotions after making a purchase, these emotions are less intense than before they actually acquire a product. This shows that experiences makes us happier than stuff — even in the act of buying.
THE KEY TO HAPPINESS
There are several factors to happiness
Your body / Awareness / The Gap
Emotional Intelligence / Lightness / Self esteem
YOUR BODY
Your body and your mind work together. In any action you take, connect with your body first. If your body sends a signal of physical distress or emotional discomfort, you need to reconsider the action but on the contrary if your body feels peace and excitement, then proceed. Mind and body are always connected. You cannot have a single thought or feeling without your body responding.
Intuition is another powerful tool. Intuition resides in the heart feeling, both intuition and heart are connected to your inner spirit. One very important key to happiness is to have awareness that your mind, body and spirit are not separate, these are the 3 components for transforming your life and to the field of infinite posibilities.
EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Emotional intelligence is another tool for happiness. Before you act on an emotion, connect to your heart where intuition resides. You need to trust your heart. It will help you to experience empathy, compassion and love. Emotional intelligence nurtures all relationships by reminding you to see yourself in the another.
Emotional intelligence is not accessed as a fact, it is more a process of scanning the ways we have experienced things working in the past and apply them in a new situation. It is important to be aware that your emotions and how you react can impact people positively or negatively, therefore you need to learn how to manage your emotions especially when you find yourself under pressure.
THE GAP
The gap is the space between our thoughts. Thoughts are ideas, opinions and beliefs, produced by thinking that occurs suddenly in your mind. Our thoughts require a pause between them to give life to what they represent separately. They need silence between them to attract and manifest new forms into life. This is the gap, it is the space that allows us to create, imagine and manifest all what we want to create with those thoughts, a place of peace and serenity.
If you are looking at a person or event that is making you uncomfortable you need to shift your attention to the space or gap between you and the other person, in this space is stillness. So when you bring attention to space, you still the mind. By doing this your body can begin to release frustration and tension. It is a state of deep relaxation where healing becomes active. Your body needs to release stuck emotions, memories and traumas.
Try this exercise: sit still, relax and focus on your body, go within and see what happens. Most likely you will feel unexpected physical sensations, discomfort or tightness, expontaneous emotions, maybe tears and a sense of relief. All these things are showing you that your body needs space to heal. If your body is in it’s natural state of well being this exercise will produce the opposite effect, you will feel a sense of deep stillness and peace; lightness; joy and a sense of wonder of the unknown.
In few words, when your body is in a natural state, you are experiencing happiness. When you are happy at this level you regain the memory of who you really are. Your conciousness is fullfilled, because in every cell of your body there is a state of joy, certainty and knowingness.
LIGHTNESS
Lightness in your body is another indicator of happiness. You need to pay attention if your body feels heavy or dull. These feelings are an indicator that you are suffering from inertia and habits rather than experiencing the potential of freshness and aliveness. When this happens you need to replenish your body with sleep, rest, the joy of movement and engagement with nature.
AWARENESS
Awareness has an immense power, it sends feedback from the body to the mind to feel supported, nourished and content. When mind and spirit are in harmony, happiness is only a natural result. If you feel the lack of harmony, and instead discomfort, pain, depression, anxiety and illness, it signals that unhappiness or disharmony has entered the field somehow, either in your mind, body or spirit; therefore awareness has become disconnnected and an issue has been created.
Your body has an infinite intelligence. It will let you know when this field has been interrupted. It is so important to pay attention and bring awareness to your body and listen what your body needs to tell you. Awareness is intuitive as it grants you access to the infinite field of intelligence in your body. Being aware of your body will connect your infinite intelligence, creativity and inner power.
To bring awareness in your body the main rule is grounding yourself. For example, if someone is irritating you, your normal reaction is to be angry or agitated, when you are having these emotions you loose the calm and harmony that connects you to the field. When you feel this disruption just go within and feel the sensations of your body and take a deep breath to come back to the body’s awareness, focus on the distracting sensations until they disappear. This will break the stimulus-response which will create a gap, an interval of non reaction. This will stop any reaction fuelling itself. The body will come back to its natural state of harmony and self regulation.
Awareness is a healing tool. Disease only happens when the body forgets how to regulates itself. We focus on people, events and many different kinds of outward stimuli.
SELF ESTEEM
Most people get confused with self-image. When our self-image is created we tend to identify with external things. People seek money in the belief that the more money they have, the happier they will become. Money, status, possesions and the opinions of others have a powerful effect on who we think we are. Then we crave for approval because it boosts our self image. But all this is not your true-self. Your true self has no limitations. It is expansive and possesses an infinite creativity. It is fearless and it is willing to step in the unknown.
If you shift your sense of identity to your true being it will free you to create a life of abundance, joy and fulfilment. When you don’t remember who you really are, you have fallen in the trap of the ego identity. Ego is insecure. It is addicted to approval, control, security and power. Without them the ego feels lost and afraid. The ego feels isolated, and needs outside validation in order to belong and have worth. The ego feels limited, it needs power and control over others because it fears its helplessness will be exposed. Ego prefers routine and habit over creativity as routine makes it secure. The ego fears tremendously the unknown because its see the unknown as a place of emptiness and darkness. The ego has a deep sense of lack, it struggles to get what it wants, and assumes that without struggle, needs will never will be fulfilled.
Living your life through the ego will make you an unhappy person. For example, if someone gives you a flattering comment, it creates an instant happiness but a sarcastic comment and you are inmediately wounded. Your true self achieves everything the ego wants: fulfillment, joy, security, peace and love because all these qualities reside in “being”. Disengagement from ego is paramount for happiness. This attachment of approval from others goes back from childhood; when we felt we had to earn our parents love. But we are not children, we are adults. Notice how deeply unhappy you feel when someone you love doesn’t give you enough attention or moves away. A child’s emotional neediness may make it hard to accept when someone you love may need some space now and then.
Let go of all hurts and wounds from the past, those were only experiences to help you grow and find your true self. Your true self is real, full of potential, creativeness, fearless, limitless, gives you the power of intention and manifestation. To change from ego to true self you need awareness. Awareness requires practice and patience, it is a process but as the journey deepens you will notice more ease, joy, lighheartness and completely synchronicity in your life.
A person that has found their true self is someone that who doesn’t need approval and is free from criticism and flattery. It is someone who feels neither superior or inferior to anyone, someone who acts fearless because they are detached from the influence of situations, circumstances, relationships and events. Learn to be the judge of your own worth, your goal is to discover infinite worth in yourself, no matter what anyone else thinks. This will give a great freedom.
Witness when the ego is in display, it creates a contraction and tightness in the body, it can be felt in the shoulders, heart, back, stomach, solar plexus. When you observe it you can separate from the false self.
FREEDOM – HAPPINESS
When we learn that we are souls just having human experiences to learn and evolve and not to get attached to our experiences, we would move quicker to our evolution and consequently we will free our minds and find the key to happiness.
It is very important to know that happiness is largely in our control. It is not a set of external circumstances. It is not a feeling of emptiness but of fulfilment. You’ve got to examine your thoughts, your beliefs, your assumptions, your conditioning. Let go of all fears, trust yourself that you have the power to transform your life.
You need to learn that thoughts are energy, the more energy you give to a particular thought the greater its power to attract its corresponding circumstances into your physical world. A negative thought cancels the benefit of a positive thought and vice versa. We need to learn to programme and reprogram the subconcious mind. Your life is the perfect mirror of your thoughts, beliefs and mental attitude. To gain access to your greatest creative power, you must learn to control the nature of your habitual thoughts to align yourself with the one source of all power that is inside you.
Your thoughts create your reality, internalize this and apply this truth and see how your life will transform and will change in miraculous ways.
Surround yourself with people that have positive attitude, people that are happy themselves, it will help you to raise your vibrations into this journey to access happiness. Keep away from drama and negativity, it will bring you down not upwards.
Laugh lots, have fun in everything you are doing, life is not supposed to be that serious. And most of all realize that you have the power to transform your life and be happy, that it is not out there but in here, in the now. Start feeling good and smile in this moment it will raise your vibration to attract positivity. One tip, before you go to sleep programe your mind to think positive the next day, and before you get up from bed in the morning, do the same. Say “ I choose to feel good today regardless of any circumstances I will encounter, or experience during the day” Do this at least for 30 days and see the change in your life.
Enjoy your journey to happiness, it is the best gift you can give to yourself.
