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When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.
- Helen Keller
Happiness often alludes us in the form of jealousy and negative feelings when we see others with higher material possession than us. It may be a better car or better dress. When we see others advancing monetarily, we allow seeds of jealousy to spread in our heart, mind and soul. Soon, jealousy takes over our thinking and drives us to feel hatred, depression and despair. If we introspect ourselves in the midst of the state of misery, we will see the shining truth. Truth is that we choose to grow seeds of jealousy and knowingly created state of sadness. Choice was ours, not of those who have higher material possession than us. A friend of mine always complains that his wife makes him angry by doing things he dislikes. He gets frustrated and sometimes spends days in feeling of depression. What he shall do is not try to change circumstances and blame someone else for the misery since he himself fosters angry feelings by choice. He can learn to ignore when his wife does things he dislikes. He can learn to change his thoughts when that happens. He can not change what he wife does or the circumstances that allows his wife to act the way she does but he can certainly control how he reacts to these circumstances.
Learn to live one day at a time
Another source of our miseries is not living in present and fast-forwarding into the future. When we constantly fast forward and try to imagine the outcome, we plant worries and stress in our mind. We tend to focus more on the negative as clouds of doubts sink in our mind. Instead if we start to live the moment and be grateful to god for the great life than we start to feel eternal happiness from within.
Don’t worry about things you can’t change
Most of our worries come from thoughts that we choose to harbor for things that we can not control. Think about this for a moment. If it rains and ruins your plan to play golf, you naturally get mad and curse weather for disrupting your plan to play golf that day. Weaves of negative thoughts control your mind with “Why it always happens to me ? why can’t it be sunny today ?”. You are not going to change weather even if you feel worst in your mind then why would you allow yourself to be the victim of sadness ? Instead watch the beauty of nature and appreciate every moment. You will find you and happiness just by changing your perception towards the same set of circumstances because now you have learn to adapt to events that you can not control.
Keep attitude of gratitude
There is lot in our life to be grateful about. Everyday we live on this earth is a gift of the creator who lives in our mind, body and soul. His creation is selfless and full of beauty. If we become what our creator desires, we will have attitude of humbleness and appreciation for others. When we develop character of gratitude, we learn to forgive others for their mistake and learn to control our emotions. Buddha stressed a great deal on the life of tolerance. Our world is not perfect. Even science has accepted concept of tolerance for the fact that any mechanical equipment tends to inherit deviance from the norm. We tend often to tolerate ourselves with excuses. If we fail to attend a meeting, we tend to rationalize with the thoughts of “I tried but traffic was miserable, what can I do ?” yet we can not tolerate if we are in hurry and a senior citizen takes too long to get out of our way in busy traffic. We curse him and in return allow ourselves to be poised with words of emotional stress.
So when you get upset next time, take a deep breadth and quickly change your thoughts to control your emotions. You can choose to be happy every day !
To Your Success,
