What do you need to be happy?
A search for happiness has for long been a topic of study for many philosophers. There were great thinkers, some still alive, who gave various pieces of advice on how to live a happy and satisfying life. Enjoy the little things, stop and smell the roses, be positive, love what you do and do what you love... So many great sayings that will go on even when we are gone and continue to inspire people. They will try to inspire at least but will not always be successful. What is the secret then? What do we truly need to be happy? Everything? Nothing?
I too have been pondering upon this question for some time, years to be more precise, my whole life if I am being completly honest. If you look at my steemit blog page you will see that my cover image (the one with two green doors and two green windows on it) has some words on it. It says Philosophy of happiness. It is challenging to explain what that philosophy stands for without going into too many words. Some things are best learned through experience. I will, however, try to bring you closer to my point of view.
Use that word "my" with some reservation for I am not the only person in the world who thinks and lives this way. I say "my" because it is what I feel strongly about and connect to but I do not take credit for inventing it. There are some paths that promote this kind of thinking and those who advocate it being completely wrong.
There are certain religious and/or philosophical paths that promote living through suffering and how suffering will bring you closer to what they call God. This was always very strange to me. Why should we suffer? I believe this kind of thinking is comforting for those who are suffering. It is a way to calm them down and keep them in their misery by giving them hope that if they suffer in this life, the next one will bring great gifts for them. It is justifying their pain and giving it false purpose.
I say false purpose because I do not enjoy seeing people suffering and if there is something greater than me, I am sure it does not either. Omnipotence and goodness of God is not consistent with the existence of suffering in the world. We can not deny there is suffering because it is experience based, we see it and are well aware of it. Therefore, either the divine energy is not all powerful or it is not all good or it just does not care. There is, of course, the explanation that we as human beings are too stupid to understand and comprehend divinity.
I am not proposing that I have all the answers but I also do not think that anyone has. I just believe that suffering does not hold a logical stance in any of the scenarios that evolve supreme beings. Let me ask you two questions...
Do you want people whom you love to suffer?
Is it logical that something that loves you wants you to suffer?
I have stated 4 possible explanations above; not all-powerful divinity, not good, not caring and stupid humans. There is a fifth one that I will get to later, for now, let's leave this talk as it is and move on to philosophy and psychology. As for religion and spirituality (and I had to touch on those to make this text complete by approaching it from all angles), if you do believe that there is something higher than you, that something would surely be more satisfied with seeing you happy than suffering.
We like to think that we are always right. We even like to explain to others how our way is the right way. By promoting our lives and points of view as the best we are robbing others of freedom to live as they please. It is much better to say that something works best for us instead of saying it is the best in general because it is not and never will be best in general. We are far too much different to be able to enjoy the same things with equal satisfaction and appreciation.
People are very inclined to define things they do not approve of as wrong. This is because we are only seeing things from our perspective and are limited in knowing how others feel. If we knew what others were thinking and feeling we would never call them wrong or evil. Is praying mantis evil for eating her male after copulation?
Whenever I give examples from animal kingdom people say to me how that is not relevant because we are not animals. We have a different, more sophisticated brain and are more evolved. We have moral values. Really? Do we? Do we have moral values? Are you sure about that? Would you steal a piece of bread if your sick and dying partner was hungry and you had no money? Would you kill to protect your child? Would you eat another human being if that was the only way for you to survive?
It is easy to speak about our moral orders and protect them as sacred when they are not in danger of being compromised. Let's look at an interesting picture I have found.
Who is evil in this picture?
I am sure that most of you would say how there is no evil here. The hawk is the predator and the rabbit is the pray. The hawk is not evil for catching his pray for it is his food and without food, he would die. We are fairly objective here because we are looking from a distance and with all our knowledge of animals and nature in general. We were even taught how there is no evil here.
Here comes the plot twist...
There are people who will, after seeing this photo, be emotionally involved. They will feel sad for the poor little rabbit and experience bad feelings when thinking how it will soon be eaten by the hawk and die a horrible death. Those same people would react differently if they were shown a movie about hawks. Imagine a documentary about hawks with baby hawks in it. Those baby hawks get the food from their mamma hawks. They are cute with their little wings and just learning to fly. When seeing that show, we want those babies to be safe, do not want them to fall over when they learn to fly and want their mamma hawk to bring them food. It does not matter anymore how that food was once a cute little rabbit.
And yet another plot twist...
If you were shown a documentary about rabbits with lots of images of their cute little tails and faces and how they hopped around happily, you would have a different emotional response to one of the baby rabbits being snatched away by the hawk. The narrator of the show would probably point out how hawks are a threat to rabbits and how rabbits are scared of them (science has proven that animals experience the emotion of fear). Mamma rabbit would be sad for her baby rabbit child being dead and I am sure that if that rabbit could speak, she would tell you that the hawk is evil.
Evil is a product of perspective
I am sure a lot of you have seen Oceans eleven movies and Pirates of the Caribbeans. When we are shown the backstory of robbers we are emotionally involved and seem to forget how they are, in fact, robbing and bringing people pain. When we look at a handsome pirate and learn his story there is no more thinking of how pirates robbed, killed and raped people. This is because we are seeing things from a different perspective. Our mind is taking us to places it would not if the story was told from the victim's point of view. Fast and the furious movies? Vampire movies? Did you think about the victims? You did not because it was not brought to your attention.
We all have some things we do not approve and it is in our nature to not like suffering, ours or that from other people. When we experience suffering there is immediately a need to call the inflicter of that suffering the evil one. I am not in any way justifying people who are killing, raping, cheating etc. nor would I ever try to, I am just saying they are not evil. Their actions have terrible consequences for you and because of those actions, they need to be punished in some way. The reason they need to be punished is because for our society to function we all need to live by a certain set of rules and adapt our behavior to others. We can not go around killing people even if it brings us joy because that is destroying their joy. This is how humanity works. We have rules and compromises that allow us to function.
We should never allow our freedom to be greater from that of others. Behave in a way you would like others to behave and live so that your living is not damaging lives of others. That is the purpose of laws and rules, to make life enjoyable for all and not just some. Why am I telling you all this and talking about how evil is a product of perspective and therefore does not truly exist? You will find out soon enough. Let's recap what we have covered so far:
1. No one and nothing wants you to suffer. Suffering is not logical when talking about divine and/or supreme beings.
2. There is no evil. Every action has consequences and you experience some of those consequences as bad for you and others as good for you.
Emotions are not outside of you and no one is making you feel anything. You are creating your feelings. When you think of something it will make you feel sad and when you think about something else it will make you feel happy. With your every thought you are choosing how you will feel.
You are creating your emotions with your thoughts, you always have. There is nothing outside of you, everything is in. Everything is internal. Our senses allow us to experience the world around us and our brain is translating those experiences. You being sad is the result of you thinking about things that provoke those feelings. This is the reason why depression cannot be cured instantly. Our brain is stuck in a certain way of thinking and braking those stubborn synapses is hard and takes some time. Depression is cured when our way of thinking changes and becomes constant and different from the way it was when we were depressed.
When you change the way you look at things,
the things you look at change.
This is one of the quotes from Wayne Dyer, one of my favorite authors. Check him out if you have not already. The more you repeat an action the more you are "cementing" synapses responsible for it. You were first having troubles with tying your shoes but when you tied them over and over again, repeating the same action, it became easier for you. Now you can tie them with almost no effort, it is natural to you. Your thinking pattern is the same.
When you repeat a certain thought enough times it becomes truth to you. This is a process. Depression almost never happens overnight. Unless there was a sudden trauma involved, it is built over time and it takes even more time to get better. Determination is the key here. Just like with tying your shoes. Choosing a positive thought over and over until it becomes natural.
This is the right time to take a small digression and tell you what I have been through. I will do so because I believe that having credibility when talking about something goes a long way. My credibility comes from personal experience and a great deal of research. A couple of years ago I was diagnosed with 4 different psychological disorders, severe depression was one of them. I was in and out of hospitals and taking serious medication. There were times when I was not able to function and was completely dependant on others. Every day was a life or death battle. Obviously, I survived.
The reason why I survived is my determination. I decided I will get better and so I did. The support I was given by my hubby obviously played a big role and I am sure that my road to recovery without him would be longer or not possible at all since he was the one who encouraged me to take responsibility for my thoughts and behavior and pushed me to work on getting better.
I am sharing my story with you to help you understand where I am coming from with my philosophy and to bring you closer to reasons why I am today the way I am and how I know about this so much. You are free to go over some of my previously published texts and learn more. I have written in detail about my experiences.
Now that we have left that little digression behind us, let's get back to what I was saying about emotions and how you are the one who is creating them. You are always creating them, with each and every one of your thoughts. Guess what? You can choose your thoughts.
Yes, you can choose your thoughts. You are doing that right now and you stop only when you are asleep. That is the only time when you are not able to choose what you are thinking about. Since you have the ability and power to choose your thoughts... See where I'm going with this?
Choose thoughts
that make you happy.
We are all different and your preferences are not the same as everyone else's. That is completely fine just be aware that there are things that make you happy and there will never be a lack of them. To tell you a little secret, you can find a happy thought about almost anything, you just need to try a bit harder.
If you want to be happy
and choose to be happy,
you WILL be happy.
So, now what? Did I answer the question from my title? Not yet, at least not in an obvious way but I think most of you have figured it out by now.
I hope you enjoyed my take on this important topic. If you have any questions, as always, I am here for you and will be glad to help you in any way I can. Until next time,
KEEP YOUR SMILE ON!
Image sources:
- all images used in this post are from pixabay and are free for personal and comercial use, you can find them by following these links pixundfertig , ArtsyBee, ElisaRiva , digitalginz , OpenClipart, Capri23auto & Counselling
- heart in my titles is from pngtree.com and is royality free
- the cover image is from pngtree.com and is royality free
- the bitmoji is well... my bitmoji. Get yours at https://www.bitmoji.com/
- heart in my titles is from pngtree.com and is royality free
- the cover image is from pngtree.com and is royality free
- the bitmoji is well... my bitmoji. Get yours at https://www.bitmoji.com/
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Nice post @zen-art , All the best...
Thank you, all the best to you too 💚
Welcome @zen-art
"Choose thoughts that make you happy." It really IS that simple! This is an incredibly detailed, thorough and informative post, btw - with some fun and provocative images. Great job. :)
Thank you for your lovely comment and your support, you are very kind 💚
Good comment @artemislives
I think you are right that we would all be better off if we could learn to think of our emotions as something that we can change. Most people think emotions are like the weather and that we just need to endure it.
I am always reminding myself to appreciate the positive aspects of my current circumstances. It is hard to do, though, because I'm generally thinking of the future - my next project. Planning for the future is important, too. I've come to realize than the one thing that brings me happiness more than anything else is variety of experience. Some people thrive in a stable, predictable environment and others blossom and grow when they are challenged with new problems.
It is sometimes hard but just keep reminding yourself and you will be just fine. Thank you for your lovely words 💚
@zen-art this is sure an awesome post worthy of read. Yeah, i once heard people talking about suffering being synonimus to godliness and i couldn't help but laugh. Happiness doesn't not really need to depend on happenings but on our decision to be happy come what may.
Yes, that is right, it does not depend on happenings, it always depends on our response to them. Thank you for your lovely comment 💚
Excellent post @zen-art very well writed and motivational!! i loved itt and i let you a gift <3
It also reminded me a thought:
It is not happier who has a lot but who needs less
Thank you for your lovely comment and for the ninja gift 💚💚💚
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Happiness is another key to long life. I believe some people will disagree with me
on this but it is very true. I really enjoyed reading your article. Impressive. @zen-art
I agree with you. Happiness really is the key to a long and healthy life 💚💚💚
Great post and an important one. I think I think in a similar way. What do I need to be happy, well, I need to remember that I am happy. I want for nothing, and I have everything that I want. Sure, not everything is perfect, but I wouldn't ask for anything different!
I am very happy to hear that. We always have so many reasons to be happy and can find a happy thought always and everywhere. It is always our choice. Thank you for your lovely words 💚
Excellent article, I think that being happy is simpler than it seems, only that people have the great ability to complicate everything.
Thanks for such a nice reading.
I notice that your post has been copied without your permission
What do you need to be happy?
PEOPLE do not click on this stupid thing! IT IS A SCAM! It has been reported to steemcleaners and if you would be so nice and flag this sucker that would be great.
What happens if you click on it? Flagged.
Great post btw. As usual... thoughtful and beautiful presented. 'What is evil''' could be a greaat QOTW!!! I think evil is doing something against one's NATURE. That's complicated by humans who are distracted by things they belive are part of their inherent nature as identity. When really, our nature is GOODNESS. But thst's a whole complicated post. I'm glad that you found a way out of your problems - so awesome xxx
It will take you away from steemit and ask you to log into steemit again. When you do so it will take your key and password. You will then lose everything you have in your wallet. This scam has been around for a while. Steemit always has to start with https://steemit.com, when it is steelit or something else, it is always a scam. This one is steemiz and when people are not careful enough they do not notice it and login in with their steemit passwords that are after that stolen away.
Clever. I thought the font looked slightly different so I quickly got out and tried to look for your repeated post by searching, but it wasn't there. Thank god I wasn't dumb enough to keep going!!!!
I am glad you did not log in there. I edited my post and added the P.S. thing at the bottom so people who will come get the message in time. I just hope no one logged in there before I made people aware of this.
I hope so too. Good on you for editing the post.Sorry it happened to land on yours xx