Happiness

Life is predominantly composed of ordinary moments, far outnumbering the extraordinary ones. Whether you are patiently queuing at the supermarket, enduring the daily commute to work, or tending to routine tasks such as feeding pets or doing the washing, the ordinary hours make up the fabric of your existence.

The essence of true happiness lies in the ability to discover moments of joy and fulfilment within the seemingly mundane routines of daily life. Real happiness is about finding beauty in the simplicity of everyday life, appreciating the small pleasures that weave through the tapestry of ordinary hours.

It can be as simple as witnessing the magic of how sunlight bounces off the corner of a sugar crystal left on the side of your coffee cup in the morning. Then through being open to the experience you have noticed how the sunlight reflected through that sugar crystal is scattered in a rainbow of colours onto an otherwise plain wall. Then recognise that happiness, joy, wonder or contentment can flourish in the most unassuming moments.

♾ Awaken your Mind ♾

Witnessing your thoughts can be advantageous in numerous ways. To start with, it can assist you to understand your own thinking patterns, propensities and even your reactions. Likewise, it aids you to become more self-aware, to enhance your emotional intelligence and ability to relate to others. Furthermore, by listening within to your thoughts, you can come to be more mindful of your internal dialogue and how it might be affecting your behaviours, mood, and emotions. If that were not sufficient, then listening to your thoughts can be an effective tool for self-reflection and acquiring insight into your own values, beliefs, and motivations.

One of the most effective methods to listen to your thoughts is as if you were observing them as an onlooker. Acting as that onlooker to your thoughts, you can more effectively be witness to your thoughts as they surface within your mind, aiding you to establish improved self-awareness and control over your thinking patterns. When you observe your thoughts in this way, you have the opportunity to notice patterns of negative or unhelpful thinking, such as worry, concern, overthinking or even self-criticism. By becoming aware of these patterns of thinking, you can start to challenge them when they appear, as opposed to reacting at a later stage to the fully developed thought-form.

Witnessing your thoughts as an onlooker has tremendous potential, because you can develop a sense of detachment from them. You can progressively learn to recognise that you can more easily change your thoughts when you are an observer of your mind. This can help you to let go of unhelpful thoughts and emotions, and cultivate a sense of clarity and inner tranquillity. Ultimately listening to your thoughts in this way can help you to live a more mindfully and purposefully existence, and to develop a more positive and fulfilling life for yourself.

♾ Awaken your Mind ♾

If you are a compulsive overthinker, you may be familiar with some of the following thoughts. Am I with the right person? Am I following my passions? Am I doing what I love? What is my purpose in life? Am I happy?

In many parts of the Western World, it seems as though one of these, the pursuit of happiness has become the ultimate overthinker or overachiever’s goal. Happiness from material life can outrank professional achievement and sometimes family and friendship. It can even minimise others’ achievements and takes the shine off our own.

Through the deluge of various social media memes, self-help books, guides, and even some meditations, there is a deep cultural aversion to negativity which is growing in society. This can be a welcome change, but the pressure to remain positive at all times often results in some complicated mental gymnastics. For example, renaming a report which lists strengths and weaknesses as strengths and emerging strengths or renaming problems as opportunities or challenges.

We all need to face the reality of life that every day is not always going to be perfect; we all have proverbial ups and downs. For most of us, each day will be filled with a proverbial sea of thoughts, emotions and feelings. How we learn to balance with this, is the real key in life. Learn to distil the positives from your life and enjoy those aspects which do bring real happiness. Then as you face true challenges or emotional dark spots, you can pull upon some of these past strengths and happiness. Most importantly, stop trying to overthink every aspect of life and that every moment must be sublime happiness, will bring you the freedom to be your real self.

♾ Awaken your Mind ♾

Increasingly all of our lives are being affected by the cult of social media and celebrity. You can become your own influencer, an influencer of your life, for life.

While you may see the snippets of other people’s lives around you, do not allow those illusions of the perfect body, dream lifestyles, fantasy homes or other seemingly enviable aspects to dominate your thinking. Steadily more and more of us are becoming unhappy, disillusioned or even worse, as we compare our lives to the world of others.

Take the opportunity to look at your own life; realise and recognise all that you have achieved. In this way, you become your own influencer, a unique influencer. It can start with a very simple concept such as “I am enough”, or “I have achieved”. Establishing this self-influencer mindset will give you a newfound sense of happiness and contentment, allowing you to continue to influence your life for the better. Make the effort to create a mantra, which you repeat every morning or even throughout the day until it sinks in and your mind accepts it. As you allow this positive aspect to build within your life, you will begin to discover that many things are your own source of happiness. You will quickly realise that “I am enough, I have enough, I have always been enough and I always will be enough” can be very powerful tools as an influencer of your own life and destiny.

♾ Awaken your Mind ♾

Negativity in the form of thoughts, emotions and opinions is something which exists in life. This is the actuality of the world in which we live. The skill is working out how to handle such negativity when you encounter it, as you will inevitably do.

While there can be lots of notional techniques for taking care of negativity, the easiest and most effective way is to resonate above it. If all of your mind is functioning at a higher frequency level, then the discord which can be created by negativity is much less likely to affect you. It is only when you are thinking similar thoughts, that like draws in like and your own thoughts become pulled to the negative thoughts, situations or activities happening in life. So continually strive to maintain your thoughts and emotions at a higher state of being, to ensure that you are resonating above negativity.

♾ Awaken your Mind ♾

Be mindful of the destination addiction where you become fixated with the notion that happiness is elsewhere. Until you surrender that concept of happiness is in another place, it is going to never be where you are. So on examination what does this all mean? If you were to answer the question, do you live your life only to get to the end of it? Then most people would say unequivocally no. However in the world today, many people suffer from the belief that success or happiness is the destination. They are always on the run, on the move, and their goal seems to be to get through the day rather than live each day. Such people become addicted to the idea that the future is where success will be found, happiness resides, and that each intervening moment is just a means to get there.

Rather than living in the now, more and more people seem to be living in anything but the now, being psychologically absent and disregarding everything currently in their life. If you find that you are thinking this way, then you are falling into the trap of destination addiction. You continually chase the illusive notion of happiness and literally suffer from your pursuits. In this case, you may find that your goal has not been to enjoy the day, but instead, you have focused on getting through the day. You have always been focused on getting somewhere, foregoing the opportunities to savour the moments of life along the way. When you arrive at the destination, the feeling of success or happiness seems to elude you, as if it has somehow escaped to the next day, week or year. Then the feeling of satisfaction is continually deferred, and you end up living your life in hot pursuit of some extraordinary bliss which you have no idea how to find.

Social media and an era of excess make a major contribution to the pandemic of destination addiction. In the never-ending pursuit of happiness, you may find that you spend increasing amounts of time or money on trying to acquire happiness. But if you are being honest, how often have you found that the happiness so acquired was only temporary? This is made worse by people and companies peddling items and experiences to “totally change your life” or “make you happier than you ever dreamed possible”. Cars with the newest widgets, fancier clothing, more exquisite jewellery or even the latest gadget, can all be symptomatic of this underlying trend to feed destination addiction.

As increasing numbers of us become engrossed in destination addiction, as we tend to rush through as many experiences as quickly as possible. You may find that you start living by the adage of “been there, done that”. Life should not be about destinations or endings; if it were then life would be very different. If life were about the destination then you would only read the last page of any book, have deserts for meals, or only attended graduation day at school or college. Destination addiction is frequently an attempt to get on with life faster, hoping that you will enjoy your life better. Yet constant rushing through life frequently means that you will miss or bypass golden opportunities along the way. In this way, destination addiction is working against you, as you become too busy or too focused on the objective to be aware of life happing around you. It can become increasingly easy to feel empty as if your life is lacking any meaning.

If you are prone to overthinking, then destination addiction is the perfect setup for failure. It can become very common for people to trade short-term gratification in the hope of reaching the ultimate goal. It could be manifest that happiness is the next deal, the next high, the next acquisition, the next drink, or even something seemingly as silly as the next hot-fudge sundae. In all these instances realise that your mind is overthinking and making you believe the proverbial adage that the grass is greener over the next hill. Destination addiction can cause you to become impatient as you attempt to reach your goal. You then end up with little time for yourself and grow evermore impatient as the destination always seems just out of reach.

It is important to be aware that none of us is immune to destination addiction, and we all have times when we have to convince ourselves that better times are ahead. The trouble with destination addiction is that it focuses purely on the end and not on purpose. Fortunately, there is an excellent remedy for destination addiction, but it is often hard to find.

The key to defeating destination addiction is to find happiness in the life you have and to achieve the goals that are important to you, not what you believe will impress everyone else. When you declare that you are content with what you have, where you are and who you are, it is possible to break out of this addiction. You may then find that you begin to live more in the now and savour the full experiences that life avails to you every day. You can then live intelligently with purpose, make the means the end, and also the end the means. Then you may come to the realisation that true happiness never comes from a destination. Happiness comes from within us as you experience and live in the here and now.

♾ Awaken your Mind ♾

As a being of energy and light, you come into this world with the capability to shine the light of your existence out into the world. However, for many of us, our light has become dim and smothered in many layers of emotions. These layers of emotions, particularly those relating to regrets, smother the light. It is like being covered in many thick layers of dirt or mud.

Take a moment to believe that what has been done, is in the past. If you allow yourself to let go of some of the regrets that you hold onto, then you will have the opportunity to remove some of the layers of emotion which cloud the splendour of your true self. As you remove some of these layers of proverbial mud, you have the opportunity for the light of your Life Force to shine out from the darkness. Allow the light of your Life Force to break through the emotional barriers and colour the world around you every day.

♾ Awaken your Mind ♾

When you are joyous, happy or in a positive state of mind, your heart and mind, are open to brand-new things. Savour every positive experience and emotion such as joy, to bring a newfound sense of wonderment to life. Even something which might have seemed ordinary can begin to hold a greater significance as you take pleasure in every moment that life offers.

Taking the opportunity to savour joy can be as simple as paying attention to the things that you take pleasure in or that make you happy. If your mind strays try your best to maintain focus on the joyous moments. Spending time to linger on these positive feelings that arise is an incredibly straightforward form of mindfulness. This can lead to a happier outlook, increased self-worth and better resilience when faced with stress and anxiety. If you savour the joy and happiness, it can bring appreciation and positivity to all aspects of your life, and you can gain greater access to your intuition and creativity. This can be partly because you are not burdened or blinded by negative thoughts and feelings which so many of us have on a daily basis.

The process to savour positive elements of life is relatively simple. If you have previously practised some type of mindfulness, you are partway there. Savouring joy is about being aware and centring your attention on some positive experience or sensation in your life. Savouring the people, experiences and things in your life enables you to grow in mindfulness, though it does not require formal meditation.

To initiate this technique, invest some time to recollect a recent experience that you found enjoyable or satisfying. That could be anything, yet if it entails some sounds or physical activity such as a walk on the beach, having a bite to eat with a new mate, or having fun with a pet, it will certainly be easier to keep your focus. Make the effort to recall that positive moment and immerse yourself in the memories. While it may not last forever, really savouring the moment can make it seem like time has virtually stopped. After that choose an additional recent event or experience which gave you satisfaction or enjoyment, and once again recapture the feelings of joy. You are most likely to find that it is much easier to stay in the moment, as the feelings of joy and happiness from your last sensation operate like a magnet, drawing in the positive sentiments. With the increased sentiments, you will be able to sustain a stronger focus on the happy moments.

Our daily lives are full of opportunities to appreciate, and express gratitude for the things that bring us joy and a sense of satisfaction and happiness. Savouring these positive moments can provide you with an oasis amidst the challenges of life. Gradually, you can develop a growing awareness of the origins of joy, satisfaction and happiness which can boost the positive influences in your life.

There are very clear benefits of recollecting these moments of joy and happiness, including improved physical and psychological health. While savouring can be beneficial, it does not deny the reality of what is difficult in our life such as challenging emotions. When you find yourself in an unpleasant mood, consider that you cannot be open to new ideas, regardless of just how fantastic or amazing they are. Without some joy in your heart, life can seem to be slow and frequently dull or uninteresting. However, this practice of savouring can enable you to bring positivity to your life by paying attention to what feels good.

♾ Awaken your Mind ♾