Happiness.

Happiness does not mean absence of problems and imperfections.Troubles and worries are an integral part of this world’s design. Happiness actually lies in how you decide to look at the difficulties and complications that you may be facing in life. You cannot have absolute, one hundred percent control over what happens to you. But you sure have the control to decide how you are going to react to what happens to you. That determines what kind of feelings you will have about your life. To someone whose heart is full of hostility and resentment towards the world, every thing appears to be in bad shape. For the people who are over critical and excessively judgmental in their day to day life, there is a plenty to complain and mumble about everywhere, every day. On the other hand, the people who are calm and tolerant and have patience while interacting with other people, find that life is beautiful and more worthwhile in spite of all its limitations, flaws and deficiencies. Why it is so? This is so because we do not see things as they are. We see things as we are. There is no point in unduly blaming others for our miseries. How we think is the kind of life we live. Our lives are as good as we decide to make them. But all decisions must be followed by some action in order to bring some change.

Offices.

A large majority of us are programmed to take up good educational degrees so that we can get a good job in an office. In an office, they have made small cubicles where they want us to arrive at the start of a day and stay there doing all that we are told to do for rest of the day. We are given a gap which is referred to as lunch break so that the quality of our work may not get affected due to hunger. We are to spend our day light hours in our work place every day for the rest of our lives. We are paid some amount of money which is not enough to buy things and stuff that we want to buy. Hence we resort to borrowing. We buy our stuff with borrowed money for which we have to pay interest which appears to be a small amount but in reality is too large a sum to be handled with dignity and peace of mind. Not all human beings find the aforementioned arrangement of things acceptable. They have a burning desire in their hearts to be able to free themselves from the confinement and captivity of offices. They strongly wish to be liberated from the slavery and binding of jobs. They want an end to the drudgery in which some one else is controlling the way they should spend their time. To reach the liberty and freedom that they are striving for, they are willing to pay the price. They put in tremendous effort with focused attention and consistency for some time. They mostly succeed. Some of them even reach the point in their lives where money starts working for them instead of they working for money. But such people are few and far between. The majority continues to complain and blame but accepts the circumstances that they are in. They are unwilling to temporarily give up the present ease as a price to attain long term relief. If it was not so, all the offices would be deserted and corporations would come to a stand still.

Action.

To come out of a situation that we do not like, we need action. Without that, be prepared to continue living in your present misery for the rest of your life. All change needs action. It may be small, trivial tasks like decluttering your wardrobe or it could be more significant and meaningful aims like getting rid of 9-5, paycheck to paycheck life and switch to a source of such steady income streams which would bring freedom from bindings. No results can be had without action. Despite being in unpleasant, horrid circumstances and in spite of almost daily feeling the need to do something to be out of that situation, mostly people do not start taking action because it seems to them that a long time (like a year or two) shall pass before they would reach at the desired result. And in this state of inaction, very soon they find that ten years have passed. Then they wistfully realize that if they had started taking action at the right time, their long time misery would have ended eight years ago. So start. To begin is the most difficult part. Start taking whatever action that you can towards the fulfillment of your desired result. Do not be afraid of the size or the duration of the task. Even if a very little action is taken with steadiness and consistency, the results can be amazingly enormous.

Miracle.

We continue to pursue more and more of what we already have. We keep chasing things that we do not really need. In this engaging activity, we tend to overlook and forget the basic, most valuable blessings that we have been rewarded with. To be alive, to be able to walk, to be able to see is a miracle indeed. That we get up in the mornings and we are not in a hospital or a prison or a refugee camp is something to be celebrated every day. Water running in taps, refrigerators loaded with food and relationships to stabilize our lives are not the things that are to be taken for granted. To be thankful to our Creator for all the blessings that He has showered upon us is a sure means to further increase such blessings in our lives. Life is too valuable to be terminated with one’s own hands. Sorrows are part of life. But troubled times must not be allowed to render our lives worthless in our eyes. How meaningful is this statement by someone, “ I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow. But through it all, I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing”.

Control.

The importance of being able to control our thoughts is not to be underestimated. If we won’t control our thoughts, our thoughts will control us. This is how most of the people spend their lives. That is why if we talk to people about how their lives have been, the answers are replete with dissatisfaction. The degree of success that we achieve in life is directly proportional to the degree of control with which we are capable of handling our thoughts. Despite this reality, the majority among us does not pay attention to achieve at least some level of mastery in this art of thought management. This is because, like so many other worthwhile things in life, this task of managing our thoughts is not easy. It is difficult. But living in emotional misery is also difficult. However, people get used to living in state of unhappiness. They keep complaining about it. But they really do not want to do something substantial to come out of their condition of discontent. Notwithstanding this tendency of people, the need to be able to manage our thoughts is pressing. This cannot be ignored just because it is difficult to accomplish. All things are difficult before they are easy.

Depression

One kind of depression leads to the other. One is the Great Depression that was witnessed in 1929 and as a result of which the entire financial system of governments, corporations and households was thrown out of gear. People were in dire straits, not knowing what to do to keep their economic setup from falling apart. Once again in 2008, we have begun to go through a similar situation. Jobs are being lost, income streams are curtailed, prices of things that we need for day to day life are climbing, creditors are making the lives of the debtors miserable and hope is diminishing in the hearts of the majority of the people. In times of adversity, human mind begins to perceive situations as far worse than they actually are. People become like the fly which keeps banging with the windshield inside a car, struggling to find a way to go out. In her acute desperation, the fly fails to notice that one of the rear windows is open and flying out of the car is quite possible. In times of trouble, human mind stops working efficiently just the same way. Possibilities appear to be fewer and even nonexistent. Disappointment mounts every passing day. Prolonged mental distress leads to emotional depressions. Then people tend to resort to extreme steps like suicide. But that is not a thing worthy of doing. Any one can die. But to live needs courage. Whatever the situation, we must review it and learn our lessons with the commitment of not repeating the same mistakes again. What is the one lesson that the current financial turmoil has taught us? AVOID DEBT. Live within your means. Don’t buy what you cannot pay for with your own cash. The surest way to establish your credit is to work yourself into the position of not needing any. Debt is slavery. Be free.

Fear.

A lot of people are afraid of dying. But this fear of death does not prevent them from death. It just prevents them from living. Every one has to die in the end. Why not try living in the meantime? Fear is a crippling thing. It paralyzes our ability to think clearly. Our thoughts become muddled and obscure. This obscurity makes it impossible for us to understand situations. That leads to further intensifying of fear. A situation that is fearsome for a person may not at all be so for another person. This is because fear is created from the way we interpret a given situation. When we are in a fearful state of mind, we tend to see frightening side in all the events that we come across. This adds to our misery. In most cases, it is just a sequence of scenes in our thoughts and imagination that keeps on nourishing our fears. By intervening into the seemingly unstoppable train of thoughts that automatically runs in our mind, we can take hold of the situation. Resolving the root cause of such thoughts is the key to the ultimate ability to stop such thoughts from occurring in our mind. And then they can be replaced with better, more realistic thoughts. Fear is damaging for our life. Instead of just surrendering to it, ways to get rid of fear must be sought seriously.

Avoid.

Avoid enraging others. Don't cause a fit of anger in the other fellow. When some one is passing through a phase of anger, he becomes just like a mad person. We all know that there is no limit of irrationality that an insane person can demonstrate. Though state of anger is a temporary madness still the consequences of actions taken in this state can be devastatingly dangerous. Therefore, for a person of balanced mind, the right thing to do is to help others stay calm and composed. It is our false pride that drags us to the point where we stop caring about the emotional state of the other person. We wrongly feel that being angrier than the other fellow would make us appear strong and impressive. We have to overcome this wrong perception. Through conscious effort, we should try our level best to keep our cool. This would prevent our thought process from becoming blurred. With a clear head, we would be able to control a situation which is likely to get out of hand by helping the other fellow retaining his sanity. In anger, we know extremely painful and steps are taken by human beings. Such actions are mostly irreversible and nothing more than regret and remorse can be resorted to after wards.

What forms our emotions?

The simple answer is: our thoughts.

Our thoughts generate our emotions. Emotions cause us to have feelings. That ascertains our mood. And our moods affect our actions. This shapes our behaviour. Our behaviour makes or mars the quality of our relationships. Whether our relationships are glowing or rotten greatly influences the quality of our life.

The importance of how we manage our thoughts is never to be under estimated. If a person A is holding a bitter thought about another person B, it is natural that it would create emotions of anger and resentment inside A. This would make him want to quarrel with B. He would feel the urge to shout at B. He would strongly want to use bad words about him.Thus A’s relationship with B would be strained.

Therefore, watch your thoughts. Monitor them. With practice, you would learn to curb a thought and modify it.