Contents
- 1. Happiness will not run away from you
- 2. You just need to decide to be happy.
- 3. Happiness is not the final station, but all 22 train stops
- 4. You Can Be Happy Even When You Haven’t Solved All Your Problems Yet
- 5. Happy people are everywhere.
- 6. Happiness is not always euphoria
- 7. Happiness is never 100 percent
This often happens: a person lives and waits for happiness, but it actually came to him a long time ago. That’s what Bocaccio once said. But there are many more unexpected discoveries that bring us the search for happiness.
1. Happiness will not run away from you
Yes, there is such a saying. Happiness does not hide from us as we think, and it does not come and go. Not right away. Happiness is always here.
We all have reasons to complain about life, and each of us has just as many reasons to smile. It is with us, and in order to find it, you only need to turn to what gives our life meaning.
What you are interested in will shape your environment. And this affects how you live your life. Every time happiness seems to be hiding from you, avoiding you, think — maybe you are looking for it in the wrong place?
As Boccaccio said: «It often happens that a person thinks that happiness is far from him, oh, it has already come to him with inaudible steps.»
2. You just need to decide to be happy.
Many people think that a person is either born happy or not. But like a good marriage, happiness requires constant work. You need to make an effort. And happiness comes, word by word, thought by thought, day by day. Those who are happy understand that no one guarantees happiness for life if you do not work on it.
As Abraham Lincoln said, «Most people are only as happy as they choose to be.»
3. Happiness is not the final station, but all 22 train stops
We are taught to think that happiness only resides in special places that you have to go to.
The truth is that happiness is not so eager to get there. In these highly livable zones, people strangely find reasons to be unhappy. Happiness is something that is born within us when we discard all that is irrelevant and meaningless, because happiness is actually a state of mind. Happiness is not a destination, but a way to travel.
4. You Can Be Happy Even When You Haven’t Solved All Your Problems Yet
People often think that they can’t feel happy as long as they have some unresolved problems, but more often the opposite happens. If you live with the feeling that you are happy today, it will help you solve your problems more easily and find a way out of difficult situations.
If we focus only on difficulties, we will see the world through our problems. And there will be no room left for us to notice what is going well in our lives. Feeling grateful for what we have now does not require special effort.
It is enough to imagine that we have lost it. Or remember what bliss is the first day without a high temperature.
Carl Jung said: “Even a happy life cannot do without a share of darkness, and the word “happiness” will forever lose its meaning if it does not exist next to sadness. It is much better to accept things as they are, with patience and calmness.
5. Happy people are everywhere.
When we are sad, the world around us seems dull. But in moments of joy, a lot of nice people immediately appear around. It turns out that many people in this world are happy.
Move to this sunny side of the street. Don’t lose touch with those you care about and don’t fall into angry conversations — that alone is enough to change your life.
6. Happiness is not always euphoria
Pack your suitcase and go on a trip. Happiness in its purest form! Then comes the gray days…
In moments of delight, we are somewhere very close to happiness, but we do not always guess its outlines behind a haze of gray rain on a working morning. But real quiet happiness is in such a peaceful course of everyday life and complete peace within us.
As Adam Smith said: “Happiness visits us almost imperceptibly, but I have seen it more often among small children, at home and in country houses than in other places.”
7. Happiness is never 100 percent
Oddly enough, the beauty of happiness is precisely that it is never complete and lasting.
“Eternal happiness would be boring at best, and nightmarish (like an eternal orgasm) at worst,” says psychoanalyst and well-known happiness researcher Manfred Kets de Vries.
Happy people have bad moods and bad days, and experience a whole range of emotions. But think about this.
At the end of a bad day, you are on an equal footing with the person who is experiencing the same thing as you, and at the same time does not doubt for a minute that he is happy.
Tomorrow morning he will saddle the horse that threw him off yesterday, and, spurring him, he will gallop towards the sunny dawn.