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Books about happiness ubiquitously fill the publishing world, but the fundamentals of happiness quite simply are just that, simple. We become overwhelmed, and then it becomes easier to fixate, and often superficially so, which expends our finite energy rather than focusing our attention on the core fundamentals and choices of what happiness requires to be deeply and sincerely felt.
When the directions are wrong you will never see materialize what you desire.
Stop the pursuit. This is something I’ve discussed on the blog before, but I think it is worth exploring again. This time, I am going to explore more concretely the fundamental components of experiences real happiness, and much more of it in our everydays. Let’s get to the seven truths below.
1.Discover a tune that is melodic for you
If you enjoy living your life, your everyday life, happiness is the result. Continually, here on TSLL, I have shared that contentment is the feeling we can have at all times. Happiness cannot be infinite 24-hours a day. Happiness is an outcome. Contentment is a state or way of traveling. I had it entirely wrong when I was younger, doodling “Be Happy” on my high school peechee folder while daydreaming in class. You cannot be happy constantly, but you can be content along the way to happy.
2. Spend time doing tasks that enable you to lose track of time
Getting lost in a project, exploring a new [enter a place/area of curiosity], resting your mind and being in a healthy way, these will divert your attention naturally away from checking the clock. And when you are thinking about what’s next, you are present. And when you are engaged fully in the present moment, you have more chances of being happy.
3. Sharing time with loved ones to simply be in each others’ company.
Giving your life space to be together, even if in silence, can be incredibly peaceful, supportive and loving. A contentment shared is happiness reached.
4. Not having existential worries because consciously you know your health, finances and basic needs are tended to
Through the choices we make, we can build the sound and stable foundation that will enable us to feel content in our everydays. Everyone will make choices which align uniquely with their journey which is why outsiders may define the choices we make to usher in more happiness for ourselves as sacrifices. However, a choice is not a sacrifice if it brings you closer and eventually to a way of living that brings you peace and contentment. It is when we achieve contentment that more happy moments can be experienced and savored.
5. Refraining from thinking at any time “when I achieve [enter goal]” or when [enter aupposed life milestone], then I can be happy.
Focusing only on the outcome and forgetting about how we travel to arrive at the destination is a recipe for unhappiness. However, if the travel does not involve contentment, the outcome you seek is not as likely. Why? It is when you enjoy the journey, when you can be yourself along the way, that the outcome is relinquished, thereby not putting so much pressure on the outcome to hold all the goodness. It is when we expect or assume that we step out of being present along the way, hurting ourselves and others along the way, and thus tainting the outcome so it can never be a source of real happiness if ever it is reached.
6. Find peace in how you travel through life
How you speak and think of yourself, how you engage with others – communication with words, body language, etc. – contentment is felt in our mode of travel, and no matter life’s circumstances, it can be constant. Sleeping well and deep and long is a mode of travel as it allows you to wake up with a clear mind, acting from a place of calm, clarity and full awareness. Taking breaks when our mind needs it, ending the ‘work’ part of our day when we can no longer be productive, eating well and slowing down to savor it, slowing down and refraining from default patterns of speech, being fully aware and listening, then thinking well about what we have heard before responding – each of these ideas and practices of day-to-day living are modes/ways of traveling that cultivate contentment as we move through our days.
~Book to explore: Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall Rosenberg
7. Letting go of others’ maps for our lives
Certainly a courageous decision. A decision which is exceedingly difficult during the first and second chapter of our journey, but with time and support, the journey becomes easier and far more rewarding than any other direction would or could have offered.
All of this is to say that the key to happiness is to discover and cultivate contentment in our everydays so that the happiness deepens and more frequently can be fully observed, savored and appreciated.
~Please do tune to the audio version as each point above is discussed in much more depth.
Petit Plaisir
~Sunset in the Blue by Melody Gardot (October 2020)
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