Happiness

The reason we are motivated to do whatever we do can all be boiled down one thing. Ultimately, when like a toddler you run out of why questions, you do your job because it is going to lead you to happiness. Its why you had those dreams when you left college. You were going to have the house, car, pool and friends and that was what would make you happy and that was what got you going in the morning.

So now that you have been working for 'x' amount of years are you anywhere near to that ideal yet? Are you happy? Statistically very few of you would have answered "Yes" to that one. I have my own perspective on happiness which I would like to share.

In order to be truly happy certain conditions must be met.

You need peace. When you worry you can't be at peace and as long as that peace is missing from your life, happiness will elude you. Its the stress associated with worrying that is keeping you from happiness.  In order to find peace (a big positive) you have to sacrifice the negatives. Sacrifice is the emphasised word here.

You need freedom. Without freedom you cannot be happy. In order to be completely content within yourself you need the freedom to be yourself. You need to be freed from all constraints, and especially self-restraint.

You need love. That ought to be obvious. What's not obvious is that it is not the love you get that feels so good, its the love you give. And the more you can give the more you will get. Its the same with every emotion. Love Joy Anger the lot. Remember, love is not a finite resource within you, there's ample for everybody.

Here's a nasty one one, you think? You need humility. This is not the state of having nothing, it is the state of wanting nothing for yourself. And its often not so nasty. It is good for the soul to sometimes have nothing. As you come out of that experience you know what is worth keeping.

Lastly, you need time,  which is a double-barreled one. You do need time to give to yourself to be with yourself. To find peace and to be free takes time. And then you sometimes have to discard your perspective of time. The past does not exist. It really doesn't. Its gone, dead. You will not ever see the past again. It is only in your memory that a shade of the past lingers.  There consequently is no future eaither except as a concept that we alone are conscious of. But it does not yet exist and their are how-many-people in the world who each have their unique vision of what the future will hold and it is, as yet, undecided and non-exitant and unpredictably moody. You obviously cannot exist in a world that does not exist, you only exist in the present. Your entire life takes up just this split second and even less. You can use a millionth of a second as an example and it would still be true to say that you exist only in that extremely brief moment. Do not clutter it up with stuff that is dead and gone or worry about consequences. Life is too short. Live every moment like its the only moment.

Thats about it. If other elements strike me as necessary, like, er... intent perhaps, then I shal tag it onto this post.