Happiness is a habit

#Happiness is a habit #

                                           A student once asked a teacher, “Why isn’t everyone happy?”

The teacher replied, "creator gave happiness to everyone on

this earth, but we human beings compare ourselves with

other people and make us sad".

Happiness is a habit, it is a good habit to ponder often on.

One must sincerely desire to be happy.

Nothing is accomplished without desire.

Happy people are healthy people. Happy people live longer and enjoy a greater quality of life. They function at a higher level, utilizing their personal strengths, skills, and abilities to contribute to their well-being as well as of others and society.

Happiness is one of the causes of the good things in life, and also promotes more happiness.

In general life circumstances, achievements, marital status, social relationships, even your neighbors—all influence how happy you are. But we should understand that happiness is under personal control. There is no blockage to happiness. External things are not causative. These are effects, not cause. Take your cue from the only creative principle within you. Your thought is the cause, and a new cause produces a new effect. Choose happiness.

Aristotle described striving for happiness as the most important of all

goals and as the goal of life itself, as articulated in the following

quotation: “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the

whole aim, and end of human existence”

Happiness, character strengths and good social relationships act as buffers against disappointments and setbacks.

Nearly all good days have three things in common:

1. a sense of autonomy,
2. competence, and
3. connection to others.

The confidence arises as soon as you stop caring what everyone else thinks about you and paradoxically your personal self-worth tends to come back stronger after the flow of experience is complete.

It's important to note that evaluating happiness isn't a highly precise scientific undertaking. For one thing, happiness is a subjective term, and there's no universal measurement for it. Though someone smiles on the outside, it doesn't mean that his or her apparent joy reflects internally.

I think we need a well-formed mind instead of the well-filled mind.

A large portion of our lives revolves around two aspects – working and interacting with other people.

A small moral story which we all learned when we were a kid.

Once upon a time a Crow lived had very much satisfied happy life, but one day he saw a swan…

This swan is so white and beautiful. I am so black crow thought….

“This bird must be the happiest bird”

He expressed his thought to swan.

The swan replied…

“I was feeling that until I saw a parrot which has two colours. Now I think Parrot is the happiest bird in the creation.”

The crow then approached the parrot. The parrot explained, “ I lived a very happy life until I saw a peacock which has multiple colours”.

Then crow went and visited a peacock in Zoo. Crow saw that hundreds of people had gathered to see the peacock. The crow approached the peacock.

Dear peacock you are so beautiful, every day thousands of people come to see you.

I think you are the happiest bird on the planet.

The peacock replied, I always thought I was the most beautiful and happy bird on the planet.

But because of my beauty, I am entrapped in this Zoo, so fast few days I have been thinking that, if I were a crow, I could happily fly everywhere.

That is our problem too, we make unnecessary comparison with others and feel sad.

Learn the secret of being happy and discard the comparison which leads to only unhappiness.

It's important to note that evaluating happiness isn't a highly precise scientific undertaking. For one thing, happiness is a subjective term, and there's no universal measurement for it. Though someone smiles on the outside, it doesn't mean that his or her apparent joy reflects internally.

In 2016 December Peak winter I was in Delhi. Morning 7 am, and I am sitting and sipping my tea and I heard children and women voices from below and I peeped from the balcony.

There was a  construction work going on in the next compound and workers' families were also staying there.

They had put FM radio Hindi songs and two children were dancing while the mother was making rotis and a father was helping her to keep the fire burning. In that 2-degrees temperature, the whole family was laughing with joy!

Regularly indulging in small pleasures, getting absorbed in challenging activities, helping poor and needy people, maintaining close social ties, and finding a purpose beyond oneself all increase life satisfaction.

Happiness is more important than other desirable personal outcomes, such as having a meaningful life, becoming rich, and going to heaven. Money is important to happiness, but only to a certain point. Money buys freedom from worries about the basics in life—housing, food and clothing.

Just as definitions of happiness change, so does our ability to handle adversity. Numerous tales exist of people undergoing tremendous hardships - cancer, losing a job, a bad breakup - and finding themselves at the end as happy as or happier than ever.

Even the most well-off individuals are not immune to various sorts of stress and tragedy. However, such unfortunate events do not necessarily lessen or impede a person’s happiness. The key to determining whether a person benefits from unfortunate or is simply miserable lies in the person’s response to stress.

A small change in one’s perspective can lead to astounding shifts in well-being and quality of life. Injecting a bit more optimism and gratitude into your life is a simple action that can give you a radically more positive outlook on life.

The Easterlin Paradox states that richer people are usually happier than the poor. But as a whole, richer societies don't show much more happiness than poor ones, and a country's improved economic standing does not improve happiness.

The Easterlin Paradox grew out of studies by economist Richard Easterlin in the early 1970s. Easterlin found that a certain level of increased income boosted happiness among the poor -- but only to a certain degree. After that, the money people made compared to their peers, or relative income became more important in determining happiness than their individual income. In other words, people wanted what others had.

Spirituality

A sense of spirituality contributes most to happiness and strongly correlates to a life well-lived. This relationship between happiness and taking a “big picture” view of life is born out in research across gender, age, religion, and nationality. “numerous researchers have found that those of us with strong spiritual beliefs are happier and better protected against depression than those who have no particular sense of spirituality.

Strengths

The Researchers have found that when we use our strengths, skills, resources, and abilities, we feel in touch with our “true selves”—we experience a sense of energy and function at optimal levels. The acknowledgment and use of one’s strengths are a significant predictor of both psychological and subjective well-being, which in turn contributes to the optimal functioning of society.

My personal suggestion is recollect moral stories what we learnt in our childhood; it will help us to keep ourselves happy and take happy decisions.