Achieving sheer happiness!

What does ‘happiness’ mean to you?  Often people relate happiness to finding their true soul mate, others, to buying a huge house, a prestigious car, earning a six or eight figure income, and so on…  Happiness means different things to different people.

Through this blog post, I wish to explore in a nutshell, the 5 W’s and the H (who, what, when, where, why and how), about finding happiness, according to what I think and feel.

Who

Who is responsible in making you happy?  We may feel that when things are terrific with the one we fancy / our spouse, our peers, then we’re happy.  However, happiness depends much on our own attitude and the way we see and accept things.

Mature people understand such things better, having had more experience.

What

What makes you happy? Does buying a great penthouse, or starting an eight figure salary job, make people forever happy?  Don’t we start grumbling over things again?  So did your last achievement generate infinite happiness, and did that guarantee everlasting joy?

After achieving things that we’ve yearned for, life tends to get back to normal, after a while.

When

When is the right time to be happy?  Aren’t we all at our carefree best, while we’re still young and single?  Then we grow up and take a job, start a family, see our children grow up, they move out, and finally by the time we’re retired, we’re happily carefree again?  How fake!  The right time to be happy, is always the present.

Set your own goals and milestones in life!  Each one is different.

Where

Where should you be, to be happy?  Travel abroad, away from all the trouble we face, as ‘the grass is greener on the other side’?  We can never flee from hardship!  It has to be faced, tackled, and when problems can’t be defeated, we adapt or callaborate, and learn from our mistakes.

Happiness is ‘right here, right now’!  We should make the effort to notice and embrace it!

Why

Why should you feel happy?  When we’re happy, we’re at our own best!  Remaining in good health, we’re able to be more productive at work, and give more attention to our relationships.  Life is too short for gloominess!

How

How can you be happy?  Activate your endorphins, dopamine and serotonin (also known as happiness hormones), by regularly doing things that you enjoy.

Practicing yoga, meditation, listening to music, dancing and reading are some of the ways that I indulge, to find my mindfulness and well-being.

While material progress has its importance, happiness depends much on our own state of mind, and is therefore intrinsic.  “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony” – Mahatma Gandhi.

Fortunately, it means that we can control, each our own happiness, by how we approach life, and our attitude to things we experience, on a daily basis.  Would you like to share your ideas?  Please do so.