Happiness = Happy Memories :)

These days; I often find people using taglines about “Happiness” in their social media profiles. What is happiness; How to achieve happiness; Who is ultimately happy and How to avoid being unhappy etc etc.  Happiness is the most elusive of human conditions surfaced today; all in sudden. Many of my friends, relatives & family members use such happiness taglines. It’s a good thing. I like it. I shall explain below why it is a good thing. No one talks about Wealth, Money, and Financial status in their social media taglines! Wonder why?

American economist Paul Zane Pilzer claims that increasing people's happiness is poised to become a trillion-dollar industry , up there with cars and information technology. Australians are already queuing to hand over $220 a day to an outfit called the Happiness Institute. If we  look around; we'll find thousands of them are selling us paid tricks/services to be happy, in the form of internent postings, in the form of books, in the form of coaching, in the form of regular subscriptions etc etc.  In seventies and eighties; there was a craze about finding a job for regular income; in nineties & Y2K; craze was converted to making extra money; and now for last decade or so; the focus has shifted noticeably towards achieving happiness. Everyone wants to happy, somehow but some misunderstand happiness, by thinkng it is equal to extreme wealth. They aspire to retire at the age of 40+ or before they turn 50+. Good Luck with that; I believe they are aiming for something else but happiness. The pursuit of earthly happiness is futile and impious. As long as people can be persuaded that money won't make them happy, they will waste it on trying to find out happiness through that route.

Happiness is nothing but regular manifestation of happy memories or happy thoughts. Do we agree or what? We either get happy thoughts or we get unhappy thoughts. When we get more happy thoughts on a regular basis; we are happy souls and the opposite of which are unhappy souls. Right?

So why do we get more of happy thoughts or to that matter unhappy thoughts? That is a million dollar question. Because we have been practicing to carry similar thoughts in our mind regulalrly. That's why. Most religions tackle the issue head-on; what type of thoughts we carry in our mind (happy or unhappy) is in our absolute discretion. We control that. And good news is; it is possible to change our thought pattern and change state of affair from unhappiness to happiness, if attempted. We carry more happy thoughts in our mind regularly; we continue to manifest them around for long time...then they become nearly permanent.

How do we attempt to change? We change that by forcing us to live with/within happy memories. Happy memories create happy thoughts and regular manifestation of happy thoughts is obviously the sign of happiness.  Now let’s go back to the first paragraph where I said; I shall explain below why using social media taglines on “Happiness” subject is a good thing. Here are my thoughts:

• When we want to pass in the exam; we study.
• When we want to excel in the exam; we study hard.
• When we want to loose weight; we watch and monitor our intake, we exercise.
• When we want to be a pro in swimming, tennis, football, singing, dancing, cooking; we practice, practice & practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice and practice

Practising and indulging in happy thoughts is the first step towards moving slowly into the state of happiness. Nothing can be as useful as this simple understanding . For example; I take hundred of happy pictures in a day; whichever inspires my soul (food, colour, tree, nature, people…etc etc…everything) and live with these pictures literally to keep my mind happily active. Some people write beautiful taglines all over social media platforms and others write THANK YOU THNAK YOU THANK YOU 100 times a day to remain grateful and draw happiness from that. These are all innovative yet unique way to satishfy our unique souls.

Second step is to cut-down or delink or decouple everything that comes in our way to block our happiness. If happiness is our priority; all bottlenecks must be removed; no matter how difficult those decisions can be. Bottlenecks could be people, it could be our job, it could be a particular society we live in, our house, our neighbours….anything that is probing to be a bottleneck must be removed. Nothing more; nothing less. There is no other way. Consumption of alcohol, tobacco or other intoxic / illusionary substances provide short-term relief from the unhappiness; they can’t be a long-term solution at all. If not; why waste time and money ? Lets be honest to ourselves; in selecting first what we are aiming to achieve ? Happiness (the long term) or relief (the short-term) ? Our action must follow our plan accordingly. 

Third step; is to be realistic and practical with our expectation toward life. It’s not good to be too harsh towards ourselves. Does not matter; if our neighbour has got a Bentley car or Boss has five houses in five different countries. That is their pursuit of happiness; may not sit well with our condition/characteristics. We are trained to compare ourselves with others from a very early age. By comparing ourselves to an ideal / best person; we only loose our originality, which is unique. We all are created unique. When we stop paying attention to others; only then we start to notice ourselves. Understanding ourselves is the most important thing in life to achieve, before we aim to achieve anything else. We are unique and we don’t need to prove anything to anyone.

And lastly; the proposed happiness model is therefore based on five “F”s or F5 (Food, Family, Friends, Film and Fun (We can choose any activity for our specific fun; such as Cricket? Tennis? Cooking? Singing? Dancing? Photography?)

• If we believe “Money/Wealth = Happiness”  – then we will deal with a battle-ground as we are witnessing everyday. There will be prosperity but there will not be any peace.
• If we believe “Happiness is a state of mind & a necessity”  – then the hunger for money & luxury will be outgrown and we shall discover happiness from the necessity itself. Make sense?

China wants to be super power! Big deal? No; it isn’t. India is going to surpass China's growth? Big deal? No; it isn’t. American is at least 10 times more powerful than the next powerful nation in terms of military strength! Big deal? No; it isn’t. Apple is going to launch IPHONE 7 this year or something else ? They are not big deals at all. These are all pure competitions. And these competitions are threatening our sustainability; no one cares. Exactly is the situation with happiness. We want to be happy; only after winning all competitions, after making all that money, after acquiring and achieving everything; so that we can retire at the age of 40+ or 50+. Illusion is an instance of a wrong or misinterpreted perception of a sensory experience. Let’s remember that

For now; it is the start of the weekend and it is time to create happy memories; camera ready? Speaker ready? Lets turn the volume up please…Have a fantastic weekend and remember to smile often...smile at everyone. Goodnight; Subh-Ratri & Sabah-Khair.