Hey, You Too Can Be Happy

Life is hard.

That’s a cliché. I know. I hate clichés.
But the idea expressed in that short sentence remains eternally true.

Life is hard. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar. Being humans, we are constantly stuck in futile, senseless pursuit, and often at the expense of our inner peace and exuberance. I am guilty too. And in the quest to live a full and happy life; in the midst of ugly circumstances, failure, hunger, disasters, and consequences, it’s easy to get caught up and miss out on life’s most important treasure – happiness.

But how can you be happy?
Well, oftener, the mistake we make, as a species, is that we draw our happiness from the outside when indeed happiness is a state of mind.

Let me demonstrate: I have seen poor people who are truly happy and I have seen rich and accomplished people who are genuinely sad. I know it sounds a little odd, but in the midst of adversity; in the midst of the angriest storm, one can still find happiness.
Yeah, anyone can be happy if they really want to be. Anyone can be happy if they can learn to ignore the noise and listen to their inner voice. Like I said, happiness—like fear, hatred, and love—is a state of mind, and feelings can be manipulated.

For most of us, nothing ever wonderful happens. So if you don’t enjoy getting up and working and finishing your work; if you don’t enjoy the sunshine, the smell of rain, the faint perfume in nature, a conversation, and a good nap, then the chances are never going to be happy.
Choose to be happy—in spite of circumstances—and you will be happy. Paradise, after all, is not a place; it’s a state of mind.

A psychologist and philosopher once put it this way: “action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together, and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. As Dale Carnegie put it, “happiness doesn’t depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions. It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.”