Path to happiness

What is happiness? A layman might define it as the state of complete contentment and pleasure. A neuroscientist might define it as a state of awareness where our brain releases neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin endorphins, and oxytocin. There are various definitions for this singular feeling and yet it is felt differently by every person.

As simple as it seems to get happy many people fail to achieve true happiness. For a long time, I always used to aim for short-term happiness like accomplishing a goal, meeting my friends, and going on a trip and the happiness I received was extremely heightened but short-lived. I used to aim for other sources of short-term happiness to be in a good mood. Now that I am ripening more into the flower of being an adult, I am envisaging the need for long-term happiness. I was as confused as anybody could be regarding this but then gradually, I found ways to be heedful of what is going on in my life and my surroundings.

Ikigai

 Ikigai, as some of y’all might have come across this word, Ikigai is a Japanese concept that means your ‘reason for being. ‘ ‘Iki’ in Japanese means ‘life,’ and ‘gai’ describes value or worth. Your Ikigai is your life purpose or your bliss. It’s what brings you joy and inspires you to get out of bed every day.

Vacation was the best part of my life since my childhood as I could play down all day and relax and watch the television, but as I grew up my parents and I found myself being extremely consumed by my mobile. As common as it is for teenagers to be on their mobile phones, the frequency of using it and my screening time had increased rapidly. It made me feel lethargic and I was addicted to the little invention of technology. Wasting my time by just scrolling down the social media which seems like a normal issue now. But then one day I compelled myself to get out of this hypnotizing trap of technology and get myself more in touch with reality.

I did nothing but just look out of my window, looking at nature. It was not fun when I first looked out of my window but I did not have my mobile so the only option left was to actually notice the nature around me. The more looked into the natural environment around me I started to have an indescribable bond with it.  I also started studying a course of my interest even when it was my vacation. It was a purpose which I woke up to daily except for meeting my friends and my daily activities. It was then that I realized that being busy is the art of living a happy life. Being busy is something we love doing, which makes us get up from our bed and gives us the joy of doing that. It can be as simple as watering your plants to a difficult task like studying or replying to emails.

If you have a goal in your life, you are enlightened to follow it and that gives you the motivation to reach that point of happiness. Goals act as the catalyst in the path of happiness but relying on a catalyst and not the actual residue will ruin the experiment and just like that depending on a single source of happiness can ruin the different opportunities to attain other joys in life.

Ikigai and finding multiple sources of happiness are two faces of a coin. They are not the same but need each other to function properly. It is normal to face obstacles in the process but how to tackle them is the point to focus on.

Failure

For many people like you and me, a goal is a final destination where we can achieve contentment and until then we restrict ourselves from being satisfied. Like scoring 90+ in our examinations. That is a goal we have set that we compel ourselves to achieve. Several people aspire to bring 90+ in our finals but only some of us achieve that goal and the rest of us who don’t, we term it as a failure. But why? Why do we term it a failure? Just because we did not match up to our goals does not mean we failed. Being rational at this point is paramount. When an individual thinks critically and does not blame themself, the situation, or the people around them, it gives them the strength to look into the matter. Everyone aims for the goal but only some succeed and the reason behind it is not your caliber or intelligence, it is the system of the method we plan for that goal. Failure does not define you as a person, it defines the fault in the system behind the goal you wanted to achieve but couldn’t. The next time you fail don’t feel disappointed because you failed but look into your system of the method you built, observe what went wrong, rectify it and again implement it. The ability to not give up even after facing failure can not only inspire you to be rational but also the people around you.

Victimizing yourself

In several situations I have been in, where I was the one getting hurt, I always kept prioritizing the victim in me and sympathizing with myself for going through it. Even if I wanted to get over it, I failed as I let the victim feeling live inside me. I kept feeling sorry for myself when it was time to move on.

But it is paramount to know that if you truly wish to get over an event try to let go of the victim inside you. It is okay to sympathize with yourself but also necessary to know when to stop it.

Treating yourself as a victim will weaken your strengths to attain peace. It’s you who can pull out yourself of a situation. A therapist will present multiple perspectives in front of you but it’s you who considers them. Only and only, you can pull yourself out of any situation or put yourself in a bad situation. If you change your perspective about the situation or stop the situation which is affecting you by taking the right step, you won’t get hurt and you can save up all the time which you spent feeling victimized by using it to thrive yourself as a person.

In the end, I would just like to say that the world around us is filled with mud and dirt, and rather than cleaning it all we decide to wear footwear to protect ourselves from getting dirty and the same way you can protect yourself from any unfavorable situation by avoiding it or handling it in the right way. The path to happiness is simple if you have ikigai in your life, different sources of happiness to rely on, and the ability to see and react in a situation that prevents the later consequences of victimizing yourself.

“Happiness depends upon ourselves.”