What if, in our lives, we finally stop perceiving only the half-empty glass? Seeing life in pink, it can be much easier than you think! Express gratitude for being alive, bearing in mind that we live in better times than ever before, learning from difficult experiences to make them assets. What if, from today, we leave the trivial details behind us, all those who risk ruining our lives for no reason, and we start to positively, to appreciate, quite simply, the happiness of being?

«Happiness, after all, is an original activity today, wrote Albert Camus. The proof is that we tend to hide in order to exercise it. For happiness today it is as for the crime of common law: never confess.And if we knew, finally, how to grasp happiness when it is there, and even admit it to ourselves? Because let’s not forget: as Camus once again said: “You have to be strong and happy to help people in trouble“…

Capturing the simple pleasures is, for example, enjoying a moment shared with your child. Feel fully alive during a walk, alone or with family, on the lookout for all its benefits on our senses, fully awake to the smells and colors, the gentle cries of birds and the sensations of the wind or the sun on the skin … Enjoy reading a well-written book. To be happy with a moment spent with his friends. Take part in a well-muscled workout… Fully enjoy listening to a piece of music. All these tiny everyday pleasures, when we learn to appreciate them at their true value, when we manage to seize the moment and live it, make our daily life a tasty dish to be tasted!

To be positive is also to be grateful for what you have. To see the positive aspects of our life, in short, to be aware of our treasures, to see in a way the glass half full rather than the glass half empty… “Learning to be happy is a daily business!“, Says Tal Ben-Shahar, who taught positive psychology at Harvard.

And he insists: “Just spending a minute or two a day saying to yourself ‘i am grateful to be alive‘has unsuspected consequences“. When they review their reasons for being grateful, people are not only happier, but also more determined, energetic and optimistic. Tal Ben-Shahar specifies: “They are also more generous and quicker to support others.We can even, within the couple, regularly remind each other what inspires us recognition in our relationship as a couple.

And so, as soon as gratitude becomes a habit, we no longer necessarily need a particular event to celebrate… Oprah Winfrey, American television producer, said: “If you focus on something, that thing amplifies; if we focus on the good things in life, there will be more and more good things. From the moment I knew how to feel gratitude regardless of what was going on in my life, positive things happened to me.«

«One cannot access genuine happiness without a certain proportion of emotional discomfort and painful stages“, Also considers Tal Ben-Shahar. Repeated in many songs, the famous phrase of the philosopher Frédéric Nietzche, in his essay The Twilight of the Idols published in 1888, is in this image quite correct: “What does not kill you makes you stronger.Happiness necessarily presupposes overcoming trials and obstacles.

Finally, for Tal Ben Shahar, “difficult phases increase the capacity to appreciate pleasures; indeed, they prevent us from considering these as a due, and remind us that we must be grateful for the small pleasures as for the great joys“. Now, in fact, as Marcel Proust so aptly wrote, “you can only cure a pain if you experience it fully“. Let us see the positive sides of our failures, our past sufferings, and our pains, let us be aware of what they brought us… Let us learn to heal, by making our wounds a force!

Yes, positively: thus, the professor of psychology at Harvard and successful essayist, Steven Pinker, estimated in 2017, that it was worth “live better today than at any time before ”. He stated: “There is a version of recent history very fashionable, which consists in explaining that reason and modernity gave us the two world wars, the Shoah, totalitarianisms, and that these same forces are destroying. environment and lead humanity to its destruction«.

The essayist has chosen to take the exact opposite of this black narrative, claiming that the world is better today than it has ever been, no matter what criteria we take. And so, nowadays, you are less likely to die in war or violence. Whether you are a woman or a child, rape, as well as abuse, is less common.

And Steven Pinker then enumerates a long list of arguments to support his thesis: “Life expectancy has increased, illnesses are much better treated. A newborn child has a much better chance of making it past their first year.“And this psychologist affirms, that in addition, today we are also better educated, that we have more knowledge, thanks in particular to Internet. In addition, women are also much more likely to study and no longer live under the thumb of men, or in any case significantly less. We also have the possibility of traveling, and our material comfort has never been so high.

Steven Pinker ultimately believes that, “in short, the Enlightenment program has come true“. We have everything to be happy. The economist Jacques Attali also affirms it: if we do everything to avoid the next crises, starting with the risk of climate crisis, the world could be streaming with happiness! We just need, perhaps, to pick the rose, to pick the day, to seize the moments of grace and joy that everyday life offers us. Carpe diem… Let’s enjoy the present moment, let’s enjoy happiness when it is there!