Create your own happiness

Hi everyone! I hope you picked up a few points from my last article ‘How to break the worry habit’. Today I am going to talk happiness. Who decides whether you shall be happy or unhappy? The answer- you do.

If you go around telling yourself that things are not going well, that nothing is satisfactory, you can quite sure be unhappy. But if you say that things are going nicely and life is good, you will remain happy. Every morning when you get up, you have two options, happiness or unhappiness. It depends up to you which one do you choose.

Children are more expert in happiness than adults. The adult who can carry the spirit of a child into middle and old age is a genius, for he will preserve the truly happy spirit. To become a happy person, have a clean soul, eyes that see romance in common places, a child’s heart and spiritual simplicity.

Many of us manufacture our own unhappiness. Of course not all unhappiness is self created, for other factors are responsible too. But it is a fact that with our thoughts and attitudes, we can combine the ingredients of life and either create happiness or unhappiness.

It is a pity that there are so many problems created by life itself that dilute our happiness; yet, we fill our mind with more unhappiness. How foolish to manufacture personal unhappiness to add to all the other difficulties over which you have little or no control.

Rather than to emphasize the manner in which people manufacture their own unhappiness, let us proceed to the formula to putting an end to this misery producing process. We manufacture our own unhappiness by thinking unhappy thoughts, by the attitudes which we habitually take, such as the negative feeling that everything is going to turn out badly, or that other people are getting what they do not deserve and failing to get what we deserve.

Our unhappiness is further distilled with feelings of resentment, ill-will and hate. The unhappiness producing process always makes use of ingredients of fear and worry. This shows that a very large proportion of the individual’s unhappiness is self manufactured. The question thus arises that how we may proceed to produce happiness and not unhappiness?

In order to be happy, make it a habit to be happy, for our happiness or unhappiness depends to an important degree upon the habit of mind we cultivate. There is a proverb that tells us that “
 he that is of a merry heart hath a continual feast.” In other words, cultivate a merry heart; that is, develop the happiness habit, and life will become a continual feast, which is to say that you can enjoy life everyday. Out of the happiness habit, comes a happy life. And because we can cultivate a habit, we therefore have the power to create our own happiness.

The happiness habit is developed by simply practicing happy thinking. Make a mental list of happy thoughts and pass them through your mind several times everyday. If an unhappy thought enters you mind, immediately stop, consciously eject it, and substitute it with a happy thought.

Happiness is thus achievable and the process for obtaining it is not complicated. Anyone who desires it, who wills it, and who learns and applies the right formula may become a happy person.

So be happy always. Life is too short, enjoy every millisecond.