How to Be Happy in Life | Sources of Long-Term Happiness

How to Be Happy in Life | Sources of Long-Term Happiness

Being happy or sad is a part of the life, time is cyclic, the whole universe is cyclic, then why happiness or sadness can’t be cyclic?
But, is it possible to get out of this loop?

Yes, it is.

Someone becomes happy by helping others, someone by buying new things, someone by watching a favorite TV show, and someone might become happy by hurting others.

All of them see beauty through their perception of different things and become happy.

What would happen if you make your perception beautiful?

Don’t you think you can get out of the loop?

“Happiness is not in the changing reality; happiness is in the changing mentality behind the changing reality.”

Happiness is of two types, short-term happiness, and long-term happiness. This article is for the seekers of long-term happiness. We have the subconscious instincts to find short-term happiness; this article might hurt someone’s subconscious instinct of finding happiness. But to develop long-term happiness, you have to develop wisdom & insight.

10 Ways to Be Happy

Here are the 10 ways to be happy throughout the life:

Know Few Truths

Whether you agree or not, a truth is an idea, you can kill a materialistic body, but nobody can kill an idea. A truth can be stated in thousands of different ways, but a truth is always a truth. Here are the few truths to know,

  • Happiness is transient. When there is happiness, there is sorrow, every force has an equal and opposite reaction. But none of it is permanent.  One should accept that happiness and sorrow is a part of our life, and the true intelligence is when we are neither overwhelmed by happiness nor distracted by sorrow.
  • Temporary happiness or short-term happiness is the effects of certain sudden spikes in mental activities, it can give temporary pleasure, and it will make you addicted to getting that temporary mental spike. Alcohol, drugs, cannabis, sex etc. are the temporary source of happiness. When a man finds happiness in drinking alcohol, he drinks alcohol to get pleasure every night, on the next morning he wakes up with sorrow, he can’t control his anxiety and then he drinks again for temporary pleasure, finally, he gets addicted to it and the loop continues itself.
  • Anxiety, depress, stress etc. are the thoughts of our past or future. The thoughts of past or future attack our mind subconsciously and waste our precious time & energy. When these thought attacks you, divert your focus, breath slowly for a while or think of something else.

Nourish Positive Seeds

Our thoughts & actions are the products of our mental diet, whatever enters into our mind, it transforms itself into thoughts and the thoughts transform into our actions. If we provide negative things to our brain constantly, our brain will evoke the actions based on the input we have provided; and in turn, we can have the negative pattern of thinking. 

Here are the few tips to nourish positive seeds to your brain,

  • Identify your negative pattern of thinking; replace the thought with opposite thought through constant practice. For example, if the failure of your actions is the causes of sorrow, find a solution, take action and stick to the goal.
  • Read good books to develop optimism, plan a daily positive mental diet, watch/read the motivational/inspirational article and don’t forget to take actions
  • Take breaks from social media; when you scroll a page of social media for 5 minutes, you can find love, happiness, emotion, nonsense, jokes and many more articles within that page and the different articles can attack the different parts of your brain, which in turn cause mental distraction and psychological imbalance.
  • Stop nourishing temporary happiness into your brain, watching a comedy video or a sensual video can make you happy for a while; but the happiness goes away when you stop watching or stop thinking about it.

Follow Righteousness

A Noble person may find happiness in helping other; a knavish person may find happiness by hurting others. Self-righteousness is based on self-discipline, trust, loyalty, love, and wisdom. Find the tips below to follow righteousness;

  • Be decisive; don’t indulge yourself without considering the possible consequence of an action
  • Care for yourself and care for all living creatures
  • Practice to control your mind and regulate your senses to achieve the higher level of righteousness
  • Don’t indulge in sinful activities, when you realize it, regret will follow you

Choose the Right Companion

Companion refers not only to human; companion can also be animals, books, documentary or nature. The wrong companion can inspire you the do the wrong thing, they can provide negative seeds into your brain and they can be the cause to waste your time and energy by doing useless activities. Here are the few tips you should know;

  • Start living in solitude, spend time with yourself, read good books or watch good videos.
  • Spend time with nature, spend time with your pet instead of wasting time with some freaks
  • Spend time with the few good friends you have and with your family

Find A Purpose

The human mind needs engagement, the mind takes rest while sleeping; when you don’t engage yourself, the mind will load anything from your long-term memory. If you stay idle, the thoughts of sorrow, depression or anxiety may attack you.

Find a short term and long term purpose of life, ask yourself- “What can I do and what should I do? What work makes me happy? What can I do even on Sunday? What is my passion”, think of it, dream of it and take action on it.

  • Make a daily plan, weekly plan for your purpose & goal
  • Act upon the priorities and goals
  • When you focus on the problem, you lose the goal; and when you focus on the goal, you lose the problem. So always try to focus on the goal, practice it and make it your life

Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a psychological process to bring one’s attention to the present moment, i.e. consciousness of what you are doing, where you are, and what you should do at that moment.

As mentioned already, anxiety, sorrow, depress, stress etc. are the thoughts of future or past. Reality lies in the present and you have to live in present, the question is how to live in present? Here are the few tips to practice and make habit of these,

  • Practice meditation, meditation can be done anywhere; you can try a beautiful app called Headspace for meditation
  • When anxiety or depression attacks you, divert your attention to the present, restart the mind where you left off.
  • While talking to someone, listen consciously to the person, be conscious of what you say (visualize what you say), don’t distract your mind; through constant practice, it will become your habit.
  • Engage your mind to some productive activity, don’t stay idle, get out of comfort zone, living in comfort zone can lead to mental idleness and which in turn causes the anxiety attack

Practice Sustained Attention

Sustained attention is a practice, and the power of the sustained attention can stop your mind to get distracted. Attention exercise can sharpen the mind, improve innovative thinking, improve analytical capability, and it can let you master your mind. The choice is yours, you let the mind control you or you control the mind.

Here are the few tips to improve your sustained attentive skill,

  • Engage your mind, you can practice reading books, solving problems or anything you like, make a daily plan to be attentive for at least 30 minutes
  • When your attention wanders away, bring it back, practice it and one day you will find that the “bringing back” action invokes automatically. Do you know how? Practice becomes a habit.
  • Pay attention to what you do in your daily life, whatever it may be, be conscious of it.

Also Read: Ways to Improve Attention

Develop Insight

Insight can be developed through the constant practice of mindfulness, concentration and asking questions to oneself. Insight can make to gain a deep and accurate understanding of something or someone.

Insight is developed when you try to understand how people were convinced to kill millions of Jews during the Holocaust and how the history repeats itself. You can’t develop insight just by remembering how many Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Here are a few tips,

  • Mindfulness and concentration are must for developing insight.
  • Observe yourself; how your attention wanders away, why the attention wanders away, how the anxiety attacks you, what is the source of the anxiety, what is the solution to kill that thought of anxiety.
  • When you are reading, watching or learning; ask yourself questions to understand better. Ask yourself – why did this happen, what is the effect, how the action has been taken etc.

Value Yourself

When you start valuing yourself, you can get values from other. Thinking yourself inferior to others, nerds or anything else can cause depression, anxiety. Here are the tips worth to know,

  • Never think you that you are inferior to others, we everyone is born unique, try to be unique. We can compare among good, better or best; but there is no comparison of uniqueness.
  • Stop comparing yourself with others, compare yourself with you, compare your mistakes and achievements and focus on the viable solutions or goals.
  • If failure is the cause of your depression, find out the reason for failure, find a solution and take action
  • Don’t compete with others; compete with your own capabilities, actions and thoughts.

Help Others

For the centuries; great thinkers, philosophers have found the best and the most viable way of long-term happiness in helping others.

There is a famous Chinese saying: “If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.” 

Here are the few tips anybody can do,

  • Feed the stray dogs; feed the poor or a hungry one
  • Ask yourself: “What is my passion? What problem of the society I can solve through my passion?” Think of it, dream of it, make it your life and finally turn your passion into a profession.
  • Follow righteousness, do what is right for you & for the people and never keep silence at the time of evils.

Are you still with me?

I appreciate your devotion towards learning, you are among the 1% of the population.

As I mentioned earlier, this article is not meant for all, very few people will understand the ways of finding happiness as mentioned above. 

Do you know why? 

Most of the people fail to reach “Formal Operational Stage” of cognitive development; and as a consequence, most of the people don’t have deductive thinking, hypothetical thinking or metacognition capabilities.

Improvement of cognitive skills and cognitive learning abilities are essential for developing insight; if you have a young mind, start improving his/her cognitive skills & cognitive learning abilities from today.

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