Happiness is ever elusive but you can achieve un-hapiness. Observe your thougths and emotions and rest your attention on the now. Create your life to the highest thought of yourself.
Working out what you want out of life is usually a good start. Until then, help others and do good. Makes most people happy, even if not in the profound "true happiness" sense.
Happiness is very subjective and is defined by your life experiences. For some people it's lots of money. For others it could simply be the fact they're still breathing. Only you can decide what will make you truly happy, and you probably won't know about it until it happens. Good luck!
I agree with Slip. You could come to me for training and end up really fit and healthy, I could give you the name of a great financial advisor and you end up wealthy. Maybe you get introduced to a beatifull girl and fall in love, but still be unhappy. You will not get the answer you need from others. You need to define what makes YOU happy.
My thoughts on happiness....... a) Thinking of other people rather than yourself all the time. My grandmother was one of the happiest people I have ever known and her whole life was spent looking after and helping two husbands and her children, grandchildren and many other relitives and friends. b) Quality of life. Money does not buy you happyness, some lottary winners have by their own admission had a worse quality of life after they won! Money can certainly help improve things and a lack of money can cause stress. But it can also make you less happy, Brittney Spears is rich for example. Possesions are relitive, a new Ferrari might not make a millionaire as happy as a 17 yr old driver who just got given an old Fiesta as their first ever car. c) Facing your fears. This gives you the ability to do what you desire. For example I was always too scared to join a martial arts club when I was in my late teens/early twenties. An illness scare caused me to get up the courage to go once I was better and martial arts have made me much happier in many many ways since then. This doesn't just apply to martial arts of course, it could be anything from applying for a better job to going up and speaking to that girl you like the look of.
Be comfortable with yourself and your surroundings??? I don't think external things have a relationship with happiness for anything other than a short period of time, unless it's a severe trauma. You're either a naturally happy person or not.
I sometimes doubt that we speak the same language, I was taught by this world what to desire and therefore realisation of those desire is happiness. I guessed that perhaps... did you ever see that episode of Friends when that guy says "remember that a cookie isn't Love it's just food"... so why doesn't the world respond in kind and replace that fake love with real love? Should one really need to express that "I'm unhappy with you" by drinking and smoking and such like? Surely eating junk food should mean "I want more" and drinking and smoking should mean "go away I don't like you" but it seems to be exactly the opposite! Anyway, obviously a desire to have fullfillment of the things that I NEED and to be loved, that is what I'm thinking about. I feel like I'm on a roundabout that won't stop changing its interpretation of myself... I was created by the world, shouldn't it understand me automatically? Being made "hard" by this certainly has its downfalls but I agree with what you say, however it dissapoints me that I seem to be hampered by bad timing and a certain amount of paranoia that perhaps this world expects some kind of trade-off, like if I give it some amount of my happiness that in return it might just turn around and say "oh, well you're happy now we're obviously done" and then carry on to neglect me until I can find the REAL path. Things like that, the statement itself, it makes me feel that I am stating a concrete truth that I should expect you to actually act towards me in that way, I don't know any true friendship and that really a logical response is to respond to that statement in a caring way. Drives me nuts honestly.
Smoke weed everyday! j/k.. Accomplish personal goals, help others, don't worry about others' opinions. I'd say it's a lot simpler to become happy than unhappy. Another huge factor: attitude. Think happy and you'll be happy.
I no longer look for happiness, I try to be fullfilled instead. Happiness can lead to as many bad places as well as good. Then again what would make me happy would probably bring terror to millions, so best I avoid looking for happiness. The Bear.
You can't, you have a set amount of happiness in your life and it is almost impossiable to effect that up or down. Test on amputees and lottery winners show that after a year or so, they returned to the prrviouse levels of happiness, so you are more or less born with a set level of happiness/sadness,/stress. I'm in Barcelona, I should tell the above to the guys in the bar downstairs who just saw their team loss to the Swiss a few mins ago lol.
I once read an article about hapiness which said that happiness requires two things. One is having a system to live by, a set of beliefs. That could be a religion, or a philosophy, or something else. The second is having something you really love to dfo and are good at, and have a real passion for it. Throw yourself into it. It could be anything from MA to insect collecting. but do what you love and do it well. Once I read that I realized I found that in shotokan. The philosophy of the dojo kun and o-sensei funakoshi and the MA shotokan which i love and am good at. Eureka, happiness.
