Ever wonder what makes life a joyful experience for some, while it’s a sad, often frustration filled journey for others? Is it due to their basic disposition? Is it fate or luck? Could it be Karma? These somehow seem like excuses. You are supposed to be happy, it’s your birthright – inherently you’re supposed to be full of joy and wonder. And yet for some of us, somehow, somewhere during the course of our lives, things got out of control and we are spiraled into the monotony of everyday life and find our lives filled with conflict and suffering. We are then left with the never ending pursuit of happiness, as if it exists somewhere else.
If this is indeed the case, how do we get out of this rut? How do we find our way back to that joyful and peaceful state? Well, as the old saying goes – “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”
Here are five useful tips which you may find helpful on your journey to reclaim your birthright; fundamental, inherent happiness.
1st – Understand Your Problem:
The first thing you need to do is understand the root cause of your frustration and distress. Inquire as to why you are so restless and discontented? Why is so hard to return to your default state of happiness? Take a moment to pause and examine this very moment in your life and investigate your situation honestly and openly. If you do this, it is likely you’ll discover time is the root cause.
Whenever you think in terms of time, those very thoughts will bring the issue of “becoming,” into your psyche. Perhaps you are unhappy and bored with your life because you believed in an ideal or a goal to be achieved sometime in the near or distant future, and you think this will make you happy when you finally achieve it. This seeking tends to destroy the natural beauty of your life, just the way it is, right here and right now. It sabotages the wonder of the present moment and of a simple, ordinary life.
So by dropping all your ideals for a while, and just attending to your life exactly the way it is, will help you realize that happiness and joy are are as present as the nose on your face.
2nd – Learn to Live Your Passion:
One of the most important things to do in order to live a joyful, happy life is to discover your true passion and live it, passionately. If you are able do this, you will break free from the restricting clutches of society, and you’ll be immersed in doing what you really love without concern about the secular, materialistic world.
Your orientation will shift from result based to doing based, and the actions themselves will be the reward; then you will have something that can’t be lost and no one can take away from you. This unique “something” comes from deep within you.
If only all parents could learn this most important lesson. One of their biggest responsibilities is to help their child discover what it is that he or she loves to do and then provide them with the opportunity and the tools to do that without concern for success or even survival.
3rd – Establish a Basic Trust in Life:
Our faith and our trust in life will constantly be challenged and over time (if we allow it), our life will slowly be eroded away by endless failures and continuous problems, and we will be forced to strive rather than thrive. Without the establishment of a basic trust our life will be filled with worry and anxiety. How easily we can become obsessed with self-security and preservation, forcing us to rely on specific conditions for our happiness, rather than simply experiencing the joy of “being.” So instead of trusting in life and going with the flow, we become the products of fear and worry and as a result are unable to find true peace within.
When we dump burden of self-interest, a sense of great freedom and joy arise within spontaneously.
4th – Put a Stop to Isolation and Perpetual Self-Interest:
All our continual thinking about ourselves and our endless selfish activity isolates us even more from the “whole” of life. It’s like progressively building more and more walls around ourselves until we eventually find ourselves utterly alone, cut-off from the world; lonely miserable and unhappy. Change this approach by simply dropping your endless self-interest and choosing instead to live in a connected way. By uniting with all aspects of life you’ll come closer and closer to being “one” with the great play of life, and by connecting with awareness and intelligence, to both nature and all others, this will bring you to happiness.
5th – Start Meditating:
All the tips given above for being happy are really only a part of meditation. They are all based on living a meditative life. Mediation is a process which generally starts in time and then gradually transcends it. Meditation withdraws our consciousness from the superficiality of isolation (separateness), self-interest and limitation and offers it to the Spirit.
You can resurrect your inherent happiness with daily meditation, until it become habitual and seamless; so if you really want to be happy, if you really want to be at peace, then meditation is the way.
Of related interest, click on: The Importance of Meditation to Yoga Practice
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