Have you ever been sad and a bit down. And in that moment, it was picture time, and the photographer told you “come on smile for me” and the moment you smiled into this camera, you started to feel better? No one else controls your emotions more than you do and if you send messages to your body to smile, the message to feel happier becomes even stronger.
It isn’t an easy journey which I send you on — it is a journey not travelled by many. When understood and applied in the right way, it can lead you to a happy and content life. As positive thinking can help to create our happiness. Not a new car or a holiday in a 5-start resort.
Our thoughts are a consequence of our reactions to various events that can happen in our life. It’s how we react to the problems, that create our state of mind, therefore we need to have a good attitude in life. And as we know, happiness is a state of wellbeing and contentment. It is a promise to ourselves and a commitment that we make — it’s our values that we live by or a goal. Have you ever heard anyone say “I’m committing to live a wonderfully grumpy life, may I be miserable and sad for the rest of my life.” No! It doesn’t matter which social, cultural background you are from, the truth is people ultimately want to have a happy life or define they life they enjoy living.
Once you realise that happiness is a product of our own mind so if we want to live a happy life, we need to work on our happiness every day.
Every day, we should take account of the things that make us happy and enjoy them. Be aware of them, and do more of what makes you happy and what doesn’t to allocate our energy and time accordingly. Why would we want to do more of what makes us hate us more makes us uncomfortable ultimately feeling unhappy!
And even if you don’t know what makes you happy, it is as valuable to discover the things that make us unhappy and seek to avoid those. This can be your first step to creating a life full of contentment and well-being.
Happiness is within our very being that we already know what makes us happy. We do not even have to chase it or solve a riddle, climb a thousand stairs…Happiness, in truth, lies within ourselves starting from us and ending with us.
While many people try to look for happiness through their wealth, career, money and success, and feel surprised not achieving it when having a penthouse apartment overlooking the London Eye next to Houses of Parliament, and earning seven figures per annum. Happiness is something that we choose for ourselves and a way we choose to live our life according to our being. It is not in accordance to someone else’s rhythm as merely it is to our own. It is our inner feeling that creates happiness, along with how we interpret the events of life.
For a long time when I was younger, I didn’t understand the difference between lasting happiness and just pleasure. Then I realised that Happiness coming from material things is just illusory, temporary, but just pleasure. If we chase happiness in material things, our pursue for happiness will never end as we only lie to ourselves by accumulating more wealth, and hoping that we feel the happiness flow through us. It won’t!
In a society where big companies want nothing more than make us feel our happiness is dependent on what they provide, the media bombard us daily with commercials showing people that are happy with products that they sell, they own, celebrities and their big cars, houses and smiles on their faces…They are not looking out for you and your best interest, and merely want your money, your loyalty, your commitment and create a world where the belief exists that their brand, their product — if only we own it — can make us happy forever. In reality, when having the eyes wide open in pursue to be your own creator of your happiness there is no shortcut to lasting contentment. Believe that we can pursue happiness with material things; personally there is nothing more wrong than that.
By now, you are probably wondering:
- ‘What can we do to create true Happiness for ourselves?’
There is a lot you can do and every little helps to get to this ultimate goal that everyone yearns for and you can start by creating good and happy habits. A few that I do which I’d be happy to share with you:
Meditation. In order to learn how to start controlling your mind instead of being controlled by it, learn to meditate. Nothing is a better way of understanding and letting go of your minds negative self-talk than learning to sit their and let the thoughts go by without accommodating them and feeding them. It is about being comfortable sitting with ourselves in stillness.
Be surrounded by positive and inspiring people. Social interaction is one of the key components to living a happy life. Be precious with your time and who you spend it with. Enjoy it with people that you either aspire to as they have a value that you appreciate, a positive aura; you enjoy conversing with them, you learn something from them, they have a value that you aspire to. Pick a reason, a good reason to spend time with them and nurture your time with them. You want to avoid being surrounded by energy sucking vampires or time-wasters.
Eat healthy. Our second brain is the gut! There is plenty of research by now confirming the importance of looking after your gut as much as looking after your brain. While you can detox your mind by doing meditation, you can detox your gut by looking after what you eat and literally. I do an Ayurvedic detox every six months to clean any unnecessary materials out of your body. And feel light like a feather afterwards. It not only detox your body but also your mind. Good does influence our mood and it is important to understand which types of food work for one and which don’t. We are unique in the way we perceive things as well as the way we digest things. Just because the newest superfood is chickpeas doesn’t mean it will be a superfood for you.
Know where you want to go. I cannot imagine anything worse than being in pursue of not knowing of what! Sometimes it’s nice to wake up and live into the day and enjoy what life’s virtues are. But if we want to achieve something, if we want to be someone, without a goal, the right steps cannot be achieved to be put into place. I’m not a fan of the yearly blablabla I am a big fan of goals and knowing what we want to achieve and putting our energy and time behind them.
These are the things I live by to restore my sparkle to feel content and well ! 🙂
Happiness is all about living in alignment with your values, knowing your values, and living a healthy and balanced life !
Sarah
Originally published at www.nayalove.com on September 5, 2016.
Originally published at medium.com