How to be Happy

All of us want to be happy. In fact we work so hard, toil ourselves only to lead a better, happier and a meaningful life. Better life because it promises more happiness and leading a meaningful life gives us a sense of achievement which in turn makes us happy.

Happiness is defined as a mental state of well-being, characterized by positive emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.

When everything is going on in our life as we wish it to happen we're happy. But life is seldom like that. It’s full of surprises. These surprises and sudden turn of events is what makes most of sad or unhappy but looking at it positively this is what makes a life "Lively".

Different people attribute happiness to different things, but mostly it is seen that most of us attribute our happiness to their careers, family & friends. Simply speaking, a person is happy when he has a good job, a caring family and a bunch of good friends. On pushing a little deeper we find that most of them are happy with their present family and friends but are not satisfied with their jobs and come out saying that a better job than the present will make them happier and will allow them to live their life. Ironically most of us have it but still we are not happy. Many of us have a very good job at hand but still we're not satisfied with what we have and are on a constant look out for something more challenging and more rewarding thinking that a better prospect will make our life happier. Research shows that a career influences on 3% of life's happiness which is very negligible compared to the rest. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying one doesn't need a good career, but constantly feeling that a better one would makes us better is an unending quest.

A newer job makes us happy but that happiness doesn't last longer and it’s not very long before you start feeling the same what you had for your previous job. Most of us don't make it explicit because we don't want to be stamped as 'Job Jumpers', but somewhere deep down that lava is bubbling.

Same happens with newer friends, a new friend brings in lot of new things and you start feeling good but going on even he/she becomes boring as you have now known that person. So what is it that makes us happy? New things are definitely not what make us happy, but still we're on a constant pursuit of happiness behind newer things.

The reason for this is all of us inherently have something called 'Happiness Baseline'. This baseline varies from individual to individual. The higher the baseline the longer he stays happy. That is why you see few people happy most of the times. A new job triggers this happiness baseline and as we go above our happiness baseline we feel overjoyed. We want this to continue but it doesn't as it is just a temporary effect and it slowly starts coming down. This entire happiness series can be seen as a triangle wave series in physics going up when a change happens and when things are constant it slowly starts coming down. The fall is steep when you are surrounded with a negative situation. When the fall cuts your happiness baseline and continues downwards is what I call the 'Depression State'. A mild depression state is ok because everyone gets into it at one point or the other but this doesn't stay long because the same above principle works to get you back to the normal happiness state. But if the fall continues without going upward one falls into a state which I call a 'Deep Depression State' and this can be pretty harmful and care must be taken to avoid it at all cause. Motivation by the right person at the right time can get a person back from the 'Deep Depression State'.

So does that mean we can never be happier than what we are? Well, I didn’t say that. All we have to do is change our perspective. Don’t attribute your happiness to things that are constantly changing, instead focus on things that don’t change often.

Here are few tips which you might find useful in your pursuit for happiness:

1.          Smile: Smile often; although this might sound simple, it’s not that easy. But smiling can really work wonders. There’s nothing that discourages your enemy than your constant smiling face. Smile when you are sad and you will find that you are not sadder as before.

2.          Forgive: Learn to forgive, I don’t mean it just for namesake, when you do it do it heart fully. But before you want do it, if you feel like saying that act of him/her has hurt you deeply tell it and then also tell him that you forgive him/her for that act. Trust me, you’ll feel more relaxed after wards.

3.        Talk it out: If you have any problem with anyone better speak to that person and get it sorted out. This works most of the time. If it doesn’t at least you won’t feel it that you didn’t give it a try from your end.

4.         Talk to your family regularly: Honestly, this helps a lot. You will discover that there are many wise people in your family than you ever knew.

5.         Be optimistic: No matter what bad happens to you, never leave the hope that good will not happen to you.

Remember that you need to bend during the tough times to blossom during the good times.