Friday, 21 September 2012

Veda Prada. N_BLP028_Self Leadership_Happiness_September 2012


Happiness is a state of complete bliss & satisfaction which a living being feels from the core of one’s heart & soul. And ironically, happiness is attained through one’s own self, by the harmony of mind & soul. But we usually correlate happiness with the external factors, especially our beloved ones and other material needs.
 In a way, superficially it’s true that our beloved ones are the main source of our happiness and sorrow. We are so habituated in exchanging all the warmth & love from our loved ones that we presume them to be the only means of our happiness and we expect more and more from them every day until we encounter a day when our expectations are not fulfilled. This leads to the intolerable sorrow & depression. In the roller coaster of happiness & sorrow we forget that we are solely responsible for our own happiness. Nobody can make us feel happy, sad, inferior or superior without our consent.    
There are typically two types of happiness; one being temporary which lasts for a very short duration and other which creates a great impact in our lives and lasts for lifetime. Temporary happiness is usually associated with temporary ecstasy and fulfilment of material needs.  Once our needs get fulfilled we grow more greedy and selfish. Our hunger for temporary happiness can never be satisfied. In contrast, long term happiness is long lasting as it creates a sense of self actualization and we lose interest in material needs as we attain self satisfaction.
We as individuals create different barriers for our own Happiness. We link our happiness to our surrounding people, place, atmosphere and other things. We are highly disturbed if anything linked to us does not offer us what we expected of it.
Every living being is bound by emotions and humans are no different. Our lives revolve around people and relationships. With them, come emotions and memories. Memories don’t have base but still have strong presence in our lives and the more we try to forget them, the more they get engraved in our thoughts.
Memories can be both good & bad. Good ones cheer us up every time we remember them. Bad ones depress us every time we remember them & with time they take up the forms of the other strong feelings like guilt, fear, revenge & regret.  These feelings eat up all our enthusiasm and the urge to lead a happy life. They force us into darkness & gloom and we as individuals succumb to our own mental inhibitions and mirage. We are so lost in the negative cloud of darkness that we don’t even realise that if we had created it then we have the power to destroy it.
We are the creators & destroyers of our own happiness & grief. We just don’t realise it. It is indeed very difficult to realise this and practically apply it in our daily lives. It takes lots of courage, determination and persistence to overcome our own fears & grief.
It is always recommended that we seek out for our loved ones or friends to recover from a trauma. We as humans are so connected that we reach out to our people at all the times, either happy or sad. Thus, the cycle of life continues. But the moment we master our feelings through self actualization, we would hardly rely on any external factor to change or alter our behaviour and feelings.
We should always control our feelings as per our wish and never let our surrounding influence our behaviour and emotions. Happiness can only be achieved through inner peace & harmony.

Images courtesy: Google images.

No comments:

Post a Comment