The 10 steps to Happiness

Chennai

1. Reduce Your Needs & Increase Your Responsibilities

If you sit and make a note of all your responsibilities and all your needs, and if you find that your needs are more than your responsibilities, then life will lead to misery. But if you take more responsibility and have fewer needs, then you will be happy.

2. Look At People Who Have Bigger Problems Than You

Once a wise man drew a line on a board and told his student to make the line shorter without touching or erasing it. How would you do it? You have to shorten a line without touching it. The student then drew a much longer line underneath that line. So, the line automatically became shorter. The lesson here is that if your difficulties appear to be very big, lift your eyes because you are only focused on yourself. If you lift your eyes up and look at those who are in a worse condition than you, you will suddenly feel that your burden is not as bad as you thought it was.

3. Don’t Be Unhappy About Being Unhappy

Never mind if you are unhappy for a little while, so what? If you think I should never be unhappy, then that becomes a cause of unhappiness.

4. Drop Unpleasant Memories Of The Past & Live

In The Present Moment How can you be happy if you’re holding onto unpleasant memories of the past? Unpleasant memories are the biggest hindrance for you to be in the present. We have advanced in technology but we have not used that technology for our mind. If you are happy now, the past will not torment you and the future will take care of itself.

5. Know That Everything Is Temporary

None of the events are permanent; pleasant or unpleasant, all pass and move away. When you realize this you will be happy.

6. Dedicate Your Life To A Larger Goal

The key to happiness in life is to not stay stuck in ‘Me, me, & mine’. Dedicate your life to some larger goal or to the service of others around you, then you will find that only happiness flows through your life.

7. Take The Decision That ‘I Will Not Allow Any Situation To Bog Down My Happiness’

If you awaken the valor inside of you, and say, ‘Come what may, I am going to keep smiling’, you will notice tremendous energy rise from within you. Then problems will feel like nothing.

8. At All Costs, Save Your Mind!

In your day to day life, people come and put some negativity in you, and that makes your mind and your determination shaky. Don’t let this happen. Put a filter to your ears and just smile through it.
 
9. Have Faith Because Faith By Itself Can Make You So Happy

What you need to remember at all times is this, ‘There is someone who loves me very dearly, and is taking care of me at all times. Knowing this too brings such joy in one’s life.

10. Share Your Happiness With Others & It Will Grow

When you are content; when you are happy, you want to share it.  The nature of joy is to share with others. Joy has the tendency to spread, and whenever a person is genuinely happy and joyful from within, they want to just share it with the whole world.


— The writer is the founder of Art of Living Foundation and can be reached at www.artofliving.org