How To Be Happy Anyway
Philosophical And Practical Wisdom That Makes Happiness Work
My deepest desire for you is to be happy, to be strong, passionate, joyous, and free!
How Bad Do You Want It
If happiness is something that you want so bad that anything else becomes almost irrelevant—there are ways to attain it practically in any circumstances. That is so if you’re willing to work on yourself, and learn to look at things from a different perspective, adapt, grow and change.
At some point in life, I realized that all I really wanted was to be happy. You bet I was not, even worse — I was intensely, painfully unhappy. There were times in my life when I felt good, often when I was younger, but disappointment after disappointment throughout the years brought me to a point of complete disillusionment.
Everything that I ever desired and idealized turned out to be not what I thought it would be. Failure after failure, loss after loss brought me to the conclusion that it must be the only lesson that we’re bound to lose everything we hold dear, in the end even life itself. That pushed me to search for spiritual meaning and ways to find happiness.
With ups and downs, meaningful breakthroughs and bitter setbacks, the decades of searching, and many books and teachers behind I was able to find a way to get what I wanted — a real, steady, at times outrageously intense personal happiness.
Lessons Learned
First and foremost what one has to do to find tangible, meaningful, lasting, unconditional, true, boundless happiness is to realize that it is not to be found externally, not in the world, in people or things, experiences, or circumstances. Why? Because all these things are transitory, they can be taken away from you, lost or stolen, tarnished, broken, corrupted.
The true happiness, the happiness that can not be taken away from you, the happiness that you really want has to come from you, from inside of your being, it can not come from anywhere else. First, you have to find it in yourself for yourself, and then you have to gift it to the world and share it.
Of course, your lover, friends, money, wonderful things, and experiences can make you happy, very, very intensely happy. But lovers and friends can also badly hurt, disappoint, and betray, money can run out, things break and dissolve, experiences fade, cherished treasures lost or stolen, relentless flow of time and sick affairs of this world leave you empty and sad.
The sooner you realize that nothing outwardly can guarantee true and lasting happiness the sooner you can part with silly thoughts of making yourself happy by chasing after countless things you think will make you happy. And then move on to a more balanced outlook on the subject. Externally, things and conditions will always change, and not always for the best; trying to control everything will make one mad, we can only learn to control our inner state.
I want to be very clear that in no way shape or form I would suggest you avoid experiencing and enjoying all those countless wonderful things that the world has to offer. Quite the opposite, I would advocate for a complete and utter enjoyment to the fullest of such things while they last. Just don’t trouble yourself with the desire to hold on firmly to the people, objects, and subjects you love, possess, and ponder — save yourself a lifetime of worry and sadness.
How To Be Happy
To be happy one needs to realize three things. The first is to not idealize anything or anyone. The second is to forget about your troubles. And the third is to learn to appreciate every little thing. Well, I know it is easier said than done but believe me, there’s no other way, I have tried.
Do Not Idealize
The main thing that makes us unhappy is our erroneous belief in ideals. We dream and hope and strive, work and fight hard because we want the best. But at a closer look, our ideals more often than not disappoint us, we’re getting bored fast with things we got, upset at many changing conditions and fleeting moods.
Save yourself a heartache, part with immature fantasies of ideal people, places, objects, and thoughts. Get a balanced view of reality and see how everything has two sides to it, and nothing is quite perfect. Learn to see how perfectly imperfect everything is, and how everything can be perfected, or how there is no end to perfection if you will.
Oh, and just forget about getting anywhere near true happiness if you think that you know everything, or you value opinions, or that you’re always right, in fact, forget about being right at all if you want to be happy.
Forget About Your Troubles
To forget about your troubles is to allow for your happiness. Yes, it’s that simple. Just like in a good church on Sunday morning a fine fella, or a lady would proclaim: “Forget your misery! Rise above your troubles!”. Just like that, you have to forget about your real and perceived troubles, forget about your misery, sadness, guilt, shame, angst, problems, and suffering.
You will absolutely have to forget about your pain, your hurt, grudges, hate. To forget about your troubles is to allow room for contentment, peace, happiness. Realize we’re here but for a short while; we’re here to learn, get experienced, grow, become wise, get enlightened, and transcend life. And what all the worries of this world would mean to you when you’re gone anyway.
And if the ego is to stand on your way with its doubts and its ideas telling you that you’re wrong, you will have to learn to ignore its nasty comments and see it for what it really is, just plain and simple negativity complex. This is the only way to deal with these issues, I don’t know of any other.
Learn To Appreciate Everything
To appreciate every little thing is to know the way to endless happiness. Sounds confusing and counterintuitive, maybe, but learning to appreciate deeply, intimately, radically every little object and subject you encounter will open you up to the miracle of valuing everything in your life, and that in turn will reward you with genuine joy, curiosity, and passion. The ability to find and recognize the value in everything you see will give you wisdom and insight into the deepest secrets of life.
You will have to learn to appreciate not-so-good, and maybe down the road even bad things that are happening to you. Like a nasty cold that kept you in bed for three days, tormented and suffocated, and wasted you away. But also gave you a break from constantly running around, and some time to meditate, think, reevaluate your life, and learn and grow and become stronger. And that wonderful feeling of being fully recovered, that newly found joy of wellbeing, knowledge of becoming wiser and stronger, and more humble. And of course this acute feeling of joy-giving appreciation of life.
Don’t get me wrong, it is not so easy to reevaluate your beliefs and to adapt to new unusual perspectives, it requires hard work, time, perseverance, but most of all it requires a strong desire, irresistible drive to look for happiness at any cost. Be strong in your beliefs, your convictions. Find joy, pride in your strength. Yes, be proud of your inner strength, quietly proud, not too proud. Be humble, be proud to be humble and strong.
Help People
And if you possess this deep urge to search for happiness anyplace — may you be blessed and find it. And when you find it you can keep it forever, and share it abundantly because the more you share it the more it will come from you and to you, and this is a true miracle. And if you have the inclination to help people and share it selflessly, bravely, abundantly, joyously, with love, without any thought of reward or recognition you will be astonished at the amount of pure, intense, outrageous happiness you will get back in return.
And then, one day you’ll look at the world, and people, and your life and everything around and see only beauty and grace in everything. And even if you will see some things that are not well — you’ll be calm and with great kindness and compassion understand the true meaning behind it all.
May you always be happy.
