It doesn’t matter if you are looking for your happiness or are ready to create it with your own hands, in any case, you first need to understand WHAT exactly you want to receive. You can’t go there without knowing where, and take that without knowing what. What do you need to be happy? Conversations like: happiness is when everything is fine, everyone is healthy, there is a strong family, a good job, income, etc. etc. — still empty. What is «everything is fine»? What income will make you happy? How would you describe a good job? And are you sure it will really make you happy? For many years? And every minute, having all this, will you be happy? Everything is more difficult. We often do not really understand what makes us happy, what we really need. We do not always notice what makes us happy and what makes us sad. How to understand all this more seriously?
First, we need to distinguish between two types of happiness: long-term and short-term happiness. Short-term happiness is about small joys and small achievements that you can’t even call events. The smile of a child, the hugs of a husband, the blue sky overhead, the rustle of trees in the breath of a warm summer breeze, the sight of a butterfly sitting on a beautiful flower, morning dew, meeting friends … They come suddenly and can disappear just as instantly, but they often do us happy in everyday life. Short-term happiness is available to everyone, it is only important to recognize it, catch it and enjoy it, and this needs to be learned, like any other business. See Pictures of Happiness…
And there are goals that can make us happy only after some time, for example,
Another thing is the purchase of a house, the birth of a child, a promotion. This is not a trifle, these are important and serious things, they are not available to everyone and not immediately. For their sake, you need to work hard, but what you have earned remains with you for a long time. This is long-term happiness. When planning your life, you need to think about your long-term happiness; Waking up in the morning, you need to remember about the affairs of the day and the tasks of the year. But it is also true that, waking up in the morning, you need to be open to the beauty and generosity of the world, to catch wonderful moments, to appreciate the care of loved ones and the opportunity for us to take care of them ourselves. We need both. True happiness is made up of these two halves, just as happiness in a family is made up of the hugs of loved ones or the cooing of a mother with a child.
And yet, will first care about long-term happiness. Just as you need to invite your beloved to a beautiful and clean house, so happiness will come only where he feels comfortable. True happiness requires a strong foundation. If you have an uncomfortable rented apartment with a train under the window and two hours one way before work, while there is no health, something constantly hurts — either your back, or your teeth, you have a nasty boss and terrible neighbors, and at home there are periodic conflicts with loved ones — there is no need to talk about happiness. There is no happiness here at all, you need to survive here. That is, your task is to remove all such moments that make talking about happiness simply inappropriate.
Metaphor — for a normal house, you must first lay a solid foundation. You can’t build a comfortable house in a swamp or on a sliding glacier.
Second: the house of your happiness must be built according to your own project, for yourself, for your tasks. There is no ideal home at all, what will be a dream for one may not suit another at all. What do you need? You will find many good answers with the help of the Wheel of Life article. You can give yourself other real clues by starting your Emotion Diary and analyzing your own mood swings.
As a rule, these first answers of yours are more of a indication of the direction of what you need to think about. Your thoughts, dreams and blueprints need to be brought to the specifics.
If this is a good job and a good income, then what will be the measurement criterion for you? How will you understand that the work is good and the income suits you? How do you know that your family is strong?
Try to think through everything to the smallest detail, the more specific the parameters are defined, the more clearly you will imagine your happiness for yourself.
Next, it is important to decide on the timing. When would it be happy to start a family or get a good job? In a year? Five years? Twenty? So, if you determine that it is happiness for you to have children, then you agree that having them in the near future and / or in 15 years will significantly affect your state of happiness. Therefore, the definition of happiness for oneself must be written clearly and with reference to time.
Now review your list and check if everything you want is really achievable. So, if you write that happiness is to earn a million dollars in a year or buy an apartment in two, then such a desire most likely does not coincide with your real possibilities. And what is unattainable will not give you happiness. Fine! If you have set yourself only real, achievable goals, then outline a real plan of action and — go ahead! We work, work, work cheerfully and joyfully, because everything we do every day brings us closer to what will make our life more beautiful.
And precisely in order to bring ourselves closer to happiness not through clenched teeth, but in a state of joy, we will learn to notice the happiness that is already with you. Look, what do you already have that is important for your happiness? Are your parents alive and do you love them? Do you have children, do you have someone to admire? Most likely, not everything that is important to you is already on your list, but what is? Consider: do you like your job? Do you have a comfortable apartment? Maybe you are beautiful? Are you great at cooking? Or maybe you just got enough sleep today, and when you opened your eyes, you felt how good you feel? And if you decide to please yourself and, having run barefoot on the floor, washed yourself and dried yourself with a fresh towel, then how much fun did you manage to catch?
Happiness is achievable. We create happiness ourselves: if, of course, we are not just fans of dreaming, but are ready to work for this.