Staying Happy
Happiness is a marvelous thing:
the more you give, the more you are left with.
Blaise Pascal
Living a happy life is something we are all capable of doing. Our body is programmed in a such a way that we experience the least pain and suffering possible. Generally, what gets in our way of staying happy is our learned survival strategies and behavior, thought patterns and beliefs.
I believe living a happy life is a skill you can develop, just like learning to bicycle. Of course, this is a much more complex skill, rather a skill set, you could say. But once you have developed and perfected your happiness skill-set, it won’t ever go away and it will continue to cultivate energy, balance, peace and health in your life. In fact, after a while it becomes a habit how you choose to live your life.
What Is the Meaning of Happiness?
I think, we all have a definition of what it is. For instance, music and dance inspire me to become instantly happy – and by happy I mean I feel at peace, joyful, playful, creative, free (to be myself) and loved. Of course, I have my particular preference in what type of music and dance that move me the most. To someone else collecting stamps and doing puzzles might be the method to inspiring an instant state of happiness.
And what is a happy life, besides the brief moments that we treasure and that generate this inspiration to feel happy? I think it’s safe to say there’s no universal perception of what happiness is; it’s easier with emotional concepts like joy and fear to find a common ground.
On a fundamental level, happiness is personal, no size fits all. There are a bunch of variables involved. It depends on personality, beliefs, perceptions and past experiences. We all have our unique path of happiness to walk. So our level of commitment to and the state of happiness depends very much on how true we are to ourselves.
How true are you to who you are? How balanced is your inner life is with your outer? Are you bold enough to be authentic in your life and relationships? Living a happy life is about how good you feel; in all the parts that you are; mind, body and heart. The better we feel with our life, ourselves and the people in our life, the more gracefully we can move through life’s ups and downs and the more consistently we can give to the world.
The Happiness Skill-Set
So how do we create a happy life, when no size fits all? We have to go back to the basics, what is it that we all have in common, when we strip away the personality, the beliefs, perception and past experiences that compel us to take the actions and behave in the ways we do that some times get in our happy way.
We all have an amazing ability for creating and transforming when we practice attention and awareness, we all have a longing to be loved and to love, and we all have a body that wants us to be happy and to protect us, no matter how much we mistreat it. These universal gifts we can all use for our happiness training. As we become more skillful at these capabilities and potentials, we naturally become more happy.
- Authenticity: Be true to yourself through self-honesty, self-reflection and integrity
- Positivity, gratitude and joy: Create more feelings and thoughts that are positive than not
- Movement and flexibility: Learn to create movement and flexibility in your body, mind and heart
- Love over fear: Learn to connect and take action from your heart instead of reacting from fear
Primary Skills to Be Developed
- Learn to smile without a reason
- Develop courage in all aspects of your being
- Cultivate openness, spontaneity and imagination (to receive), explore new experiences
- Focus actions primarily on giving by showing kindness and love (compassion) to self and others Access your inner joy
- Become aware of your fears, so you can manage them better
- Practice self-reflection and meditation
- Develop awareness of your emotions and feelings (and the strategies you have developed to protect yourself from them)
- Get good at changing your perspective
- Become aware of your judgments
We can all develop these skills by accessing our body’s wisdom, working with our mind and opening our heart
BODY: move and enjoy your body, find a way to exercise that you enjoy, dance, listen to music, care for your body.
MIND: make conscious choices in and question how you behave and respond to life and situations, rewire your brain and improve your neuroplasticity by trying new things and experiences (get out of your comfort zone), challenge your mind by learning new things, read, do puzzles, develop mindfulness, meditate.
HEART: practice giving without keeping track, listen more, be bold, get to know your fears and continue to love, develop more trust in your life, find a purpose, connect with people, make an effort to build relationships, decide to stop taking things and situations personally.
Strange is our situation here upon Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of others...above all, for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day we realize how much of our own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of other human beings, and how earnestly we must exert ourselves in order to give in return as much as we have received and are still receiving.
Albert Einstein
