Life for anyone is a journey consisting of many ups and downs. A journey of happy moments and sad. A journey where you meet people, travel with a few and lose some. A journey where you experience good things as well as bad, a once-in-a-life travel where how you travel and what you get out of it depends so much on you and the way you look at the journey itself.
But what people do not remember is that it is the journey that matters, the travel that you’re supposed to enjoy and not the destination per se. People end up struggling with life and not enjoying the day to day travel in pursuit of their desired end destination which they mistakenly think of as huge accumulation of wealth, a good car, a large family, a comfortable life at the end. But isn’t the destination of all life, death? And isn’t it also the truth that no one knows for sure when or how it will be reached? Then why is it that people forget to enjoy the journey called life and only focus on the mistaken destination which does not have the surety of happening.
This mistaken destination for each individual is different in terms of how they visualize it. For every man, the desired happy ending at the end depends on what defines happiness for him or her. And men spend or rather waste their entire lives planning for this wealthy and richer happy ending and forget experiencing and enjoying the journey itself.
The reason behind unhappiness:
So if one were to ask why so many people are unhappy in life, the straight answer would be that people always tend to make a life out what they are missing and not what they havein a particular point in life. Think about it. At any point in life what anyone usually is thinking about is what they don’t have and what they need to work towards, and just simply forgets about being happy or being satisfied with what they actually possess. And thinking about what one doesn’t have is always vis-à-vis the desired wealthy happy ending that one has visualized for himself.
In simple words, you spend your entire life thinking of how to be wealthy enough so that you live happily and comfortably during old age. This might include a bog mansion, a number of cars. So during your entire life, you always crib and cry about what you don’t have – the salary which should have been a bit more, the job profile which should have been better, the wife who should have been more understanding, the children who were supposed to be more intelligent and better performers. Not only this, just think about day to day affairs. The corners of your house which should have been cleaner, the TV set which should have been bigger, the international vacations that should have been to more exotic places, and the list goes on and on.
Can anything ever make you really happy if your entire attitude is tuned into living life with not what you have but what is missing? The answer is no. No one or nothing can ever bring happiness into your life till the time you start enjoying and being happy and satisfied with what you have.
Stop thinking of what you don’t have:
The first and foremost rule in life for gaining happiness is to stop thinking about what you don’t have. Do not revolve your precious life around something as negative as dissatisfaction when you can live and enjoy each moment of this travel. So how do you stop thinking about what you do not possess?
- Stop pressurizing yourself to living each day as a race towards that desired wealthy end state
- Realize the truth that nothing is and can be guaranteed in life, not your visualized end state, and not even the next day
- Understand, that focusing more on what is not guaranteed (the future) is taking away from you, in more ways than one, the enjoyment of the guaranteed things (the present)
- Do away with the feeling of envy for others who have more than you. You do not know their share of problems in life and neither do you know what future holds for them. So stop thinking about others and start living for yourself
- Stop firefighting with life in the day to day struggle to keep up your image in the world. If someone does not think of you highly if you do not possess a certain brand of car, then that person is not worth thinking about. If you do not feel good about yourself if you do not have that car, then stop. Pause. What are you doing to yourself? Aren’t you giving the control of your own inner happiness to worthless materialistic external things? Get back on track!
How to make a life out of what you have:
Once you practice and make a habit of stopping your thoughts about what you don’t have, keep yourself from cribbing and crying about what is missing in life, you would feel a surge of positivity. Now you should take the step towards making a life out of what you have in order to feel true bliss in life. So how does one do that?
Think about what makes you happy in life.Big house?Happy family?Whatever makes you happy, segregate them into the main factors and think about what you havenow. Wait, don’t go into how much less you have, but just think about having them and think about the positives. Feel blessed that you have a family or you have a house however small or problem-laiden they might be.
When you feel dissatisfied with your job, think about those who don’t have one, when you feel that you should have had a bigger house, think about those who live on the streets. When you feel irritated with your wife and children, think about those who have lost them. Think about what you have and enjoy life each moment. That is the only way to feel being alive and enjoy the beautiful journey called life.
