How To Be Happy – in YOUR World

The Only Thing To Know ‘Bout Happiness

The pursuit of happiness? The quest for success? Or how about better relationships with everyone – including yourself? Wanna know ‘how to be happy’?…

Is it the latest Elephant Journal-cum-Higher Perspective ‘top 10 list’ you seek, then  – but which list is best? – or is there a better, Inside-Out understanding, way? In short, happiness: “10 amazing life lessons”, or 3 Principles that change everything?

 

How To Be Happy: INTRODUCTION

I was reading yet another inspirational blog post on authentic happiness the other day – as you do! – with suitably compelling title. (Or was it  a video on Facebook, or an image on Google, I forget.) And I was finding myself somewhat exasperated with yet another ‘cart-before-the-horse’ explanation of how to be happy.

Look at any series of quotes about happiness, too, and you’ll see the same misunderstanding being made.

What is that misunderstanding? A focus on symptoms, not the source.

And so I write this ‘how to be happy’ post, complete with quotes about happiness, not to aid your pursuit of happiness (to give you the definitive recipe) but to show you how and where to look for it. From within. Via the 3 Principles understanding.

And I’ve included several ‘how to be happy’ examples from the realms of so-called self-help to illustrate how self-help articles help (but mostly hinder) this ‘search’.

 

How to be Happy – The “10 Amazing Life Lessons” Way

Despite their best intentions, as you’ll see, self-help has you looking in the wrong place. At your symptoms, at the “external causes”. But happiness – the genuine, ‘authentic happiness’ variety – is circumstance independent, it really is, whatever that circumstance is.

 

How to be Happy – What HigherPerspective.com Says

10 Things You Need to Give Up If You Want to Be Happy

1. Limiting Beliefs
2. Dwelling on the past
3. Worrying about the future
4. Negative Self Talk
5. The Need to Impress Others
6. Complaining
7. The Need to Always Be Right
8. Resistance to Change
9. Blaming Others
10. The Need for Others’ Approval

Whilst these are great guidelines to living a happy, mentally healthy life, is there really anyone who chooses – actively or otherwise – to do any of these things, if they don’t feel they need to?

No. There isn’t. Nobody chooses to complain, to worry about the future or to blame others for feeling crappy. (The very act of taking any of these actions feels awful, by the way – which is a clue!) You only do this, take such an action, because you don’t know any better in that moment.

The Inside-Out understanding aka The Three Principles points you inwards, helps you take 100% responsibility for your experience of life – however good or bad you’re feeling – and also helps you to know ‘better’ (and better and better…).

I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.
– Maya Angelou

 

 

 

How to be Happy – The Inside-Out Understanding Way

On offer below, then, is an Inside-Out understanding – the human operating system, if you will – that points to the source of happiness, rather than the symptoms of it:

• Understand that you’re living in the feeling of your thinking in the moment

• Understand that it is YOUR thoughts, and your thoughts alone, that create your reality – your relationship with your thinking, and how seriously you take it

• Understand that it’s not ‘what happens’ to you that matters, but that you think/feel  – and whatever it is you’re thinking, you don’t have to think that; whatever it is that you’re feeling, it will pass; it’s JUST thinking, just feeling

• So not only do the answers lie within you, but so do ALL of your problems

• And it’s not about an understanding, but an indescribable ‘feeling’ – listen for it

Said more simply, the ‘how to be happy’ instruction could be: Understand the 3 Principles behind the human experience; find a way to deepen that understanding; listen for a feeling.

That is all.

 

 

Quotes About Happiness That Show You How To Be Happy

These very carefully selected happiness quotes point to the source, then, and not the symptoms of your happiness:

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.
– Margaret Lee Runbeck

Authentic happiness is not linked to an activity; it is a state of being, a profound emotional balance struck by a subtle understanding of how the mind functions.
– Matthieu Ricard

People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.
– Abraham Lincoln

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
– Mahatma Gandhi

Authentic happiness is always independent of external conditions.
– Epictetus

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
– Eleanor Roosevelt

Being happy doesn’t mean everything is perfect. It means you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.
– Unknown

On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a playful, joyous energy behind what you do.
– Eckhart Tolle

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.
– James Oppenheim

 

 

CONCLUSION

Quite simply, and perhaps obviously, happiness is an Inside job.

• When you’re happy you naturally manifest the symptoms of happiness
• When you’re not, you don’t

That’s it. Yes, that really is it – no circumstances to blame, or anything, you’re either happy with your experience of yourself or you’re not. You’re in ‘the feeling’ or you’re not. And all you have to do is notice. Nothing more.

 

HOW TO BE HAPPY: Some Next Steps To Take…

You may well forget how simple life is, though, and look to the ‘outside’ for your answers. So here are some next step suggestions to help you keep remembering, then, that your experience of happiness reflects your understanding of how life actually works, from the Inside-Out:

• Don’t chase (or worry about) the symptoms of authentic happiness

• Realise, instead, that their presence (or absence) within you is simply letting you know of your current depth of Inside-Out understanding

• And know that however you’re feeling right now is okay; it WILL pass with the presence of new thinking that ALWAYS comes

Or, much more simply…