practice being happy

Let me ask you something: Do you feel happy?

If the answer is yes, good for you! And if it’s no, then why not?

Of course, if you or your loved ones are going through a major life challenge, then you may be out of touch with happiness. But if you’re living a normal life, then what’s stopping you from being happy?

The main problem that we all face — and I am not an exception by any means — is that we think happiness is an outcome. Don’t get me wrong, accomplishing a major victory or getting our favorable results feels great; but we can’t let the awesomeness of happiness be confined to only a few events in our life where we attain our goals and become successful. 

Happiness is not in the outcome alone, it’s in the process as well. At some point in our lives, all of us have said something along the lines of: “If only I had [fill in the blank], I’d finally be happy.” And there are occasions when our wants and desires may even be met, but then how does it play out? We become ecstatic for a short while, and then we come back to our ground state again. We start looking for something else that would bring us more happiness. Sadly, this never ends; there’ll always more.

What we consistently practice becomes a habit. And the more time passes, the stronger and sturdier it gets. It almost becomes permanent unless we consciously start changing it and replacing it with another one. If you practice the thought that “I’ll finally be happy when [so and so] happens,” then guess what? You’re distancing yourself from your happiness and delaying experiencing it until [so and so] happens. This does not mean you will never experience wonderful times, but no matter what, you’ll always feel sad because you train yourself at being unhappy and eventually become an expert at it. You’ll cultivate the habit of unhappiness!

Here’s a suggestion: Why not practice being happy? It’ll make your life easier and more worthwhile. 

We have to practice being happy regardless of what happens in our life, whether we succeed or experience setbacks and failures, whether we get accepted or rejected, whether we win or lose, whether we are living our dreams or still on our way to our desired destination.

The key lies in enjoying the process and the journey and to stop associating happiness exclusively with the outcome and the destination. We can practice and train ourselves to live in the present and be content with what we have. We can bring the locus of control back in ourselves and be happy right here, right now; it’s just a matter of making it a life-long habit.