Fulfillment and contentment are pathways to happiness.—Aristotle
Yesterday, at the gas station, I overheard the attendant say to the gentleman in front of me, “You are not very happy today.” The customer responded that he was in a hurry, and that there was not much to be happy about anyway.
When my turn came, I greeted the attendant with a friendly “good afternoon.” She told me that she could tell I was happy. To this I responded, “Of course I’m happy, just waking up in the morning is cause for celebration. Do you know how many people never wake up because they die in their sleep?”
She laughed and we continued our conversation for a while. I eventually learned that the gas station attendant believed she could actually feel the energy of her customers and was often able to tell if they were giving off positive or negative energy. In other words, she knew when we were happy.
An Ancient Lesson
Even though human beings face obstacles and situations that life throws in front of us every day, we are also able to learn how to handle these situations and to learn from them.
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Check out this video where Joachim de Posada discusses overcoming self doubt. Watch it now
The great debate of nurture vs. nature has been around since the beginning of mankind. And when it comes to happiness, the answer to this debate is now clearer than ever before. It is about a 50/50 split, which means that 50 percent of your happiness quotient can be worked at, cultivated, and developed by you! It also means that the other 50 percent is already set in your brain—or programmed into your hard drive.
Many of us have heard about the “happiness DNA.” While not scientifically proven, this trait can be seen in those who seem predisposed toward happiness. We often say that these people have a “sunny disposition.”
But don’t let this discourage you! While some people have a higher or lower happiness threshold than others, everyone can learn to increase their happiness factor by behaviors that can be implemented and practiced.
Happiness Exercises
There are certain exercises and practices that we can do to help us increase our levels of happiness. I must warn you that it is not easy to change the way you think, especially when you have been thinking in a certain way your whole life. But it is possible! Remember, you are retraining thought processes that have been cemented in your brain.
You are not immediately going to change from a card-carrying pessimist to an optimist in the next couple of hours. However, you can start—in a split second—to change one thought, and that thought can make you happier.
Remember. Even though you might consider yourself a pessimist or you are feeling unhappy, this first exercise can go a long way toward improving your state of mind. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and think about a very happy moment in your life. It doesn’t matter if the event occurred many years ago. Just think about that moment for a few seconds. You will notice that at the particular moment you are thinking about your happy memory, it is impossible to be unhappy.
Overcome. One interesting technique to work your way toward happiness is to understand what is standing in your way and then learn how to work around those obstacles. Get to the root of your unhappiness by asking yourself why you are unhappy and then examining methods for overcoming those obstacles.
Fake it! Another effective technique is to fake enthusiasm. Yes, even if you are not feeling enthusiastic, fake it. Many times you can fool yourself into feeling happy. Try faking positive enthusiasm the next time you are feeling down. Soon you will find yourself believing it and you will become genuinely enthusiastic.
Quit Your Worrying
Some people simply expect the worst all the time. They even defend that position by saying, “If I expect the worst, then I won’t be disappointed.” The problem with this is that always imagining a bad outcome brings out negative emotions such as worry and fear, which in turn ignite the stress response that fills our bodies with cortisone and adrenaline. When this stress response is constantly turned on, it not only wears down your body’s immune system, but it also drains your chance of experiencing a positive feelings, like happiness.
All you are accomplishing by worrying or forecasting something that in reality isn’t even happening and may actually never happen, is keeping the stress response mechanism turned on. This prevents you from enjoying the positive events happening at that very minute. In fact, we could say that you are cheating yourself out of happiness or at least the “happy” feeling you could be enjoying.
Look Inside, Not Out
If you feel that you deserve to be happy and your lousy job, your horrible boss, or your rebel kid is supposed to make you happy, stop right there. It won’t happen. Happiness is internal, not external. There might be times when an outside event can make us feel better, but it is just a matter of time before we fall into unhappiness again, waiting for another external event to take us out of the unhappiness. You can see the transience of external happiness if you go out and buy a BMW or expensive clothes to make you feel better. For a while it will work, but then you will return to your original state of unhappiness (and then you might even be out of the money or in debt). If you search for external happiness sources, you can fall into an insatiable cycle that won’t ever result in long-term happiness.
Think about it. People have the mistaken opinion that if terrible things happen to someone over and over again, then that person will be miserable forever. It is a fact that people that who have had terrible things happen do become rather unhappy momentarily. But eventually they return to the level of happiness they had before. In fact, happiness isn’t about our circumstances as much as we have been led to believe or have learned in the past.
The moment of truth is when you understand and internalize that happiness is your own responsibility. You must turn your focus within. In order to build up your own ability to be a happy person, answer the following questions:
- What are my strengths?
- Who am I?
- What unique gifts do I have?
- How am I contributing to society?
- How am I making my family happy?
- How can I become a better person?
When you are helping others, contributing to society, or giving you will generally feel better and happier. This is probably what Aristotle meant by the word fulfillment. It is an internal state that can only be achieved by looking within.
Getting Started
Nobody’s life will ever be perfect. We must accept this as fact. Hey, the world is not perfect, and if you insist on thinking that it can be perfect, you are waging a losing battle. If you are always in a state of displeasure, focusing on what is wrong with or missing from or negative about your life, you can’t be thinking about all the good things going on in your life.
I suggest that you begin your process of increasing your internal fulfillment and happiness by asking yourself three simple questions on a daily basis:
- What am I grateful for today?
- What good things happened to me today?
- What am I satisfied about today?
If you say “nothing”, think even more basically. In fact, just making it home in one piece is already a positive thing. Of course, some degrees of unhappiness are extreme and can’t be controlled on your own. If you have trouble finding positive in the most basic elements of your day, you should consider seeking outside help from a qualified therapist.
Even in the pursuit of happiness, practice counts. There is quite a bit of evidence showing that regularly practicing happiness and simply asking yourself questions like those I discussed in this article has been found to decrease feelings of depression and to enhance the happiness factor.
