7 Keys To Happines E-Book

G.D. Budhiraja

• Herausgeber: V&S Publishers
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 207

Beschreibung

What nobody ever told you

Leseprobe

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© Copyright:ISBN 978-93-505739-8-3

DISCLAIMER

While every attempt has been made to provide accurate and timely information in this book, neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility for errors, unintended omissions or commissions detected therein. The author and publisher make no representation or warranty with respect to the comprehensiveness or completeness of the contents provided.

All matters included have been simplified under professional guidance for general information only without any warranty for applicability on an individual. Any mention of an organization or a website in the book by way of citation or as a source of additional information doesn't imply the endorsement of the content either by the author or the publisher. It is possible that websites cited may have changed or removed between the time of editing and publishing the book.

Results from using the expert opinion in this book will be totally dependent on individual circumstances and factors beyond the control of the author and the publisher.

It makes sense to elicit advice from well informed sources before implementing the ideas given in the book. The reader assumes full responsibility for the consequences arising out from reading this book. For proper guidance, it is advisable to read the book under the watchful eyes of parents/guardian. The purchaser of this book assumes all responsibility for the use of given materials and information. The copyright of the entire content of this book rests with the author/publisher. Any infringement/ transmission of the cover design, text or illustrations, in any form, by any means, by any entity will invite legal action and be responsible for consequences thereon.

Publisher’s Note

V&S Publishers has published a number of bestsellers on Personality Development and Self-Help category, such as 75 Ways to Happiness, The Success of Failure, Success 2020, Winners’ Podium, etc. The present book, Seven Keys to Happiness is another milestone in this category. Here, the author has highlighted the seven salient steps or keys that are essential to attain Happiness, which is the ultimate aim of each and every soul on this Earth.

As you go through the book thoroughly, you will realise that basically ‘Happiness is a State of Mind’ that can be achieved only through contentment and peacefulness. If you are contented with your life and your mind is at peace – Happiness will automatically follow. So, in order to lessen your anxieties, tensions, stress, fear, etc., and bring your mind to a peaceful state, one has to practise the Seven Keys or Steps discussed elaborately in the book. These are: Work with Passion and Zest, Live Life to the Fullest, Live in the Present, Live Free from Attachments, Maintain a Good Health, Be Contented, Love all and Cheer up and Think Positively and have Happy Thoughts.

Actually, the main purpose behind publishing such Self-Help or Personality Development Books are to motivate the people to work harder in their respective lives to achieve their desires and targeted goals and attain true Happiness, as all of us ultimately wish to be Happy, isn’t it? If one’s mind is possessed with stress, tensions, fear, jealousy and such other negative feelings, one cannot remain happy. Therefore all negativities, pessimistic approach towards life, etc., need to be completely abandoned in this pursuit for Happiness.

Hope the book serves its purpose well in helping you (our esteemed readers) to seek Happiness in your day-to-day lives, transforming your entire Personality!

Contents

Publisher’s Note

Introduction

PART −1 Causes of Unhappiness

Chapter − 1 What Constitutes Happiness?

Chapter − 2 Causes of Unhappiness

PART − 1 Seven Steps to Happiness

Chapter −3 Work with Passion & Zest - Live Life to the Fullest

Chapter − 4 Change is Constant - Live in the Present

Chapter − 5 Live Free from Attachments

Chapter − 6 Good Health - You Can Stall Ageing

Chapter − 7 Be Content which will Lead to Happiness

Chapter − 8 Love and Cheer up — Be Content in Your Day-to-Day Life

Chapter − 9 Always Think Positively and Have Happy Thoughts

Chapter − 10 Laughter/Humour is God’s Gift to Happiness

Chapter −11 The Various Steps to Happiness

PART − III Thoughts To Happiness

Food for Thought

Introduction

To seek happiness is a sign of health and sanity. The founding fathers of the United States acknowledged this indirectly when, on July 4, 1776, they declared the “Pursuit of Happiness” to be one of the “unalienable Rights.” Happiness has been called the American Dream. But it is the dream of all peoples and races, so long as their vital powers are not sapped. Only those who are enervated will choose unhappiness, pain, or suffering over joy and delight. I am not merely talking about pleasure or amusement when I mention happiness or joy. I mean bliss, ecstasy, rapture, felicity - what the sages of India call Ananda.

Could it be a sign of our times that so much attention, energy, time and money are invested in the contemplation of disaster, misfortune, crime, war, conflict, trouble and violence of one kind or another? We read about all kinds of adversities in the papers, see them on TV, hear about them on radio and gossip about them with our friends and co-workers. It seems that we are intent on bombarding each other with bad news. Somehow, it keeps the adrenaline going — and we do tend to confuse stress with aliveness.

Then, suddenly, for one reason or another, we come to a halt and ask ourselves: Am I happy? Am I happy living like this, doing what I am doing? The fact is, we would not be asking ourselves these questions if we were not experiencing unhappiness. We maybe blessed (or cursed, as the case maybe) with material plenty, and yet, we maybe deeply disturbed. Why? Most of the time, we do not know a cure for our distress. Sometimes, we imagine that if the right job turned up or the right man or woman came along, all would be well with us. Or perhaps, we feel that a glass of bourbon or a nice long holiday might fix it all. But we are only fooling ourselves. The glass will become empty, and our vacation will come to an end, as indeed will everything else. Sooner or later, the same feeling of unfulfilment or unhappiness will surface again.

There are many people who would claim that they are generally happy. Happy even when things around them seem to come apart at the seams? Or does their happiness depend upon external circumstances or internal conditions? Can they remain blissful when their son has just totalled their car, or when they learn from their accountant that they own back taxes?

It is natural enough for feelings of anger or frustration to come up under such circumstances. The question is whether we can feel beyond these negative emotions and continue to be a loving presence. If we can honestly say, “yes”, then we are in a state that has traditionally been celebrated as a highly positive spiritual accomplishment; maybe not yet enlightenment or self-realisation, but reasonably close to it. In this book, I have tried to reveal the important seven secrets of Happiness. No deep philosophy will be found in the following pages. They are based on a common sense approach. I sincerely hope that people who are unhappy today will become happy after reading and acting on suggestions made in this book. That will be my real reward which will boost my own happiness.

G.D. Budhiraja

Chapter −1

What Constitutes Happiness?

The word, ‘happiness’ can never be defined to everyone’s satisfaction, even in functional terms, as long as people insist on using the word to mean different things at different times. For instance, we sometimes use it to refer to quite short periods of intense satisfaction (properly called ecstasy): Sometimes we use it to describe a prolonged period, free from major worries or discomforts; sometimes we apply it to experience properly joy, and so on. Some people would confine it to only one or two of such experiences, while others would extend it to cover the lot.

All these experiences, one immediately notices, are marked by the presence of agreeable feelings and the absence of disagreeable ones. So what it really comes to is, we have got to study the conditions in which agreeable feelings are generated and disagreeable ones prevented. When we have got this clear, we can settle the limits of the word, happiness in any way which is convenient.

The point we have reached so far, then, is that we can legitimately attack the problem of happiness by trying to draw up a full schedule of human needs and seeing how far they receive satisfaction; and that in so doing, we must not confine our attention to single individuals, but must constantly bear in mind their interrelation with the society they live in. To draw up such a schedule of human needs is a considerable task, for there is little previous work upon which we can call. We shall have to start at the beginning and spend several chapters, justifying our conclusions as we go along. But before we begin this, we should know what happiness is not.

The assertion that we can approach the subject of happiness by studying the conditions in which agreeable feelings are generated and disagreeable ones minimised does not imply that happiness is to be attained by satisfying as many needs as possible. There is a hierarchy among men’s demands; some are absolute, others admit of alternatives, yet others can be wholly dispensed within certain circumstances. Happiness is not the answer to a sum in simple addition. Neither is it the answer to a multiplication sum. The task is not to meet the demands to the fullest extent. As we know from the old law of diminishing satisfactions, there comes a point in meeting any demand when it is no longer a wise use of energy to proceed any further; it is better to switch one’s efforts to a different field. The delicate interplay of our various needs will become clear as we establish a picture of what they are.

A second source of error arises from the fact that when a man cannot obtain what he really wants, he will accept a substitute. Substitutes, however, are never equal to the real thing in the long run and much unhappiness can be traced to the unwitting use of substitute satisfactions. In the absence of butter, margarine provides a very real source of satisfaction: It does not follow that we shall be wise to devote our best efforts to increasing the supply of margarine. Since this may seem rather obvious, it is perhaps worth pointing out that we constantly make this mistake in our civilisation. In economic terms, we assume that the existence of a ‘demand’ is good reason for supplying what is demanded. We also assume the converse: that we need not supply what is not demanded.

I need hardly to add that the use of substitutes is not confined to the economic sphere: On the contrary, it is the use of substitutes in the emotional and intellectual spheres which is of chief interest in the present context. The childless woman who lavishes affection on a pet, the routine worker who pits his wits against the compiler of crossword puzzles, betray the flaws in our society, considered as a milieu for happiness.

Superficially, similar to the use of substitutes is the use of anaesthetics. When we cannot meet a demand, we may seek to numb it. Consider the case of the man who, being desperately unhappy because some fundamental need is being frustrated, takes to drink, to numb his misery. Looked at mechanically, his action is well chosen to raise his ‘happiness−index’. Yet no one but a maniac would regard alcohol as a valid cure for his misery. Yet this is precisely the mistake we do make − in that we consider a demand for whisky or alcohol, an acceptable reason for satisfying it and make no attempt to uncover the frustrations which cause a certain part of it. Still more generally, we accept the whole demand for goods, and manufacture them, without asking to what extent the demand is a synthetic one.

Pseudo − Happiness

Something which obfuscates many attempts to handle the subject of happiness in terms of needs is the existence of what we may call pseudo−happinesses and unhappinesses; or, more scientifically, neurotic needs.

The miser demands gold for his hoard, the Don Juan, a steady procession of women, the masochist, perpetual ill−treatment of humiliation. Can we say that these appetites are needs? Even if psycho−analysis had not exposed their artificial nature, we should still suspect them, since we notice that the miser’s gold does not bring him happiness, and the Don Juan is not long soothed by his conquests. Though the victim of a pseudo need is unhappy when it is frustrated he is scarcely less unhappy when it is met. In such a case, the road to happiness does not lie in meeting the need but in getting rid of it − just as the treatment for the chronic thirst of diabetes insipidus is not a copious supply of water but injections of pituitrin aided by a low−salt, low−protein diet.

The moment we recognise the existence of such a thing as an invalid demand it dawns on us that a great range of supposed needs can be stripped off the human personality and thrown away, leaving−it maybe−quite a simple range of primary needs on which to build our thesis. This at once recalls to us the view so prevalent in eastern cultures that the road to happiness is to be found not in satisfying needs but in reducing them. Thus the opposing schools of hedonism(satisfaction of demands) and stoicism (reduction of demands) are combined in a new synthesis. In this way we can meet another, well founded objection to many previous attempts to handle the subject of happiness in terms of satisfaction of needs.

Nothing absolute about Happiness

There is nothing absolute about the concept of happiness: It has a relative import and cannot be considered in isolation. It varies from person to person and has much to do with faith and hope, courage and ideals to live by. By and large, fear, uncertainty, confusion and greed are the mainspring of much unhappiness. Time−tested philosophies of the past help us somewhat to come to terms with what looks like the greatest challenge of our time.

But what precisely is happiness? This intriguing question is as old as the hills. According to Aristotle, happiness is not something which could be felt or experienced at a given moment. It is, in essence, the quality of a whole life, the happy life being a good life.

Happy is the man who has all the good things in life and has no need left to be fulfilled, so goes the Aristotelian conception. But what happens when greed overtakes the sense of need? The slender borderline between need and greed tends to get blurred as the acquisitive instinct takes over and becomes the prime mover of human conduct and eventually, a major source of misery. Plato, therefore, defined happiness in terms of harmony within the soul and equated it with the spiritual well−being of a truly virtuous man.

Immanuel Kant, however, decried the entire idea of happiness, regarding the pursuit of one’s own happiness as a self−centred act, motivated by narrow considerations. Accordingly to Kant, we deserve happiness by the virtue of our deeds instead of just hankering after it. But we need not always be consciously happy.

According to J. Krisnamurti, happiness is a state of which one is unconscious. It is only later, when misery strikes, does one realise how happy one was. Much depends in the ultimate analysis, on one’s perceptions and attitude to life. Two persons in similar circumstances are not equally happy or unhappy because they are not on the same wavelength and their expectations are different. Two points, therefore, clearly emerge: the less one expects from life, the greater are the chances of one’s being happy and vice versa.

Secondly, one should know one’s own mind. This is not easy, but it is essential. Swami Vivekananda echoed the Upanishadic truth when he said that the goal of man should be not to seek happiness or avoid misery but to go to the root of it all and master the situation which is responsible for their creations.

But such a mastery can hardly be possible without the right knowledge. It is due to ignorance that there is always a risk of getting carried away by things superficial and evanescent and missing the reality. What is purely external cannot have an eternal import and it is only the knowledge of the ultimate truth that can reveal the reality.

Basically, truth is of two kinds that which is perceived by the five ordinary senses, and that which is perceived by the supersensuous power of yoga. Yoga is union with the true self or God. In its secondary aspect, it is a mode of achieving that union. The spiritual processes for realising the self were built into a systematised discipline by Patanjali. He referred to the control of the thought−waves of the mind for attaining the highest consciousness as the main function of the yogic gnosis.

It is necessary to overcome the harmful thought−waves by raising waves which are good or benign. Thus, the feelings of anger, greed and delusion must be counteracted with the opposing feelings of love, generosity and honesty. When the harmful thought−waves have been subdued, the second stage of the discipline commences.

If the water of a lagoon is grimy, the bottom cannot be visible. Similarly, only when the mind is made tranquil, is it possible for the knowledge of the self to be revealed.

Happiness is an inside job

Do you resent doing what you are doing? It maybe your job, or you may have agreed to do something and are doing it, but part of you resents and resists it. Are you carrying unspoken resentment towards a person close to you? Do you realise that the energy you thus emanate is so harmful in its effects that you are in fact contaminating yourself as well as those around you? Have a good look inside. Is there even the slightest trace of resentment, unwillingness? If there is, observe it on both the mental and the emotional levels. What thoughts is your mind creating around this situation? Then look at the emotion, which is the body’s reaction to those thoughts. Feel the emotion. Does it feel pleasant or unpleasant? Is lean energy that you would choose to have inside you? Do you have a choice?

Maybe you are being taken advantage of, maybe the activity you are engaged in is tedious, maybe someone close to you is dishonest, irritating, or unconscious, but all this is irrelevant. Whether your thoughts and emotions about this situation are justified or not, makes no difference. The fact is that you are resisting what is already there. You are making the moment into an enemy. You are creating unhappiness, conflict between the inner and the outer. Your unhappiness is polluting not only your own inner being and those around you but also the collective human psyche of which you are an inseparable part. The pollution of the planet is only an outward reflection of an inner psychic pollution: millions of unconscious individuals are not taking responsibilities for their inner space.

Either stop doing what you are doing, speak to the person concerned and expressfully what you feel, or drop the negativity that your mind has created around the situation and that serves no purpose whatsoever except to strengthen a false sense of self. Recognising its futility is important. Negativity is never the optimum way of dealing with any situation. In fact, in most cases, it keeps you stuck in it, blocking the real change. Anything that is done with negative energy will become contaminated by it and in time givinging rise to more unhappiness. Further, any negative inner state is contagious: Unhappiness spreads more easily than a disease. Through the law of resonance, it triggers and feeds latent negativity in others, unless they are immune−that is, highly conscious.

Are you polluting the world or cleaning up the mess? You are responsible for your inner space; nobody else is, just as you are responsible for the planet. As within, so without: It helps in clearing inner pollution, and then the outer pollution will also cease.

Ever wonder why so me of the most successful people still seem unhappy? According to us, they have it all: looks, fame and fortune. Whenever we strive for something and reach it, there’s a duality of elation and dejection. It is over. We do what is to be done next and the quest starts all over again. Somehow, the end result usually seems to be more exciting on the way there than when it is reached. The remedy is having inner peace and all the rest falls into place and becomes the icing rather than the whole cake. When we are happy with whom we are, we can go anywhere and create that same atmosphere of warmth. If we run away, we can change locations but the same situations are carried with us. Stay put and flow with all the ideas and solutions. Then wherever you roam, you will have a house of contentment.

There are characteristics of ourselves and our loved ones that should be recognised in order to curtail inevitable problems. One such aspect is that of poor problem solving. A difficulty can only be resolved when you take responsibility for it. Another characteristic is rigidity, inflexibility in thinking and behaviour. The more clearly we see the reality of the world, the better we can deal with it. Many people stop filtering any information unless it conforms to their map of reality so their views of reality are sketchy, narrow, and misleading. Views should always have the capacity to change when new information is introduced.

Do you realise that happiness is truly an inside job? It frees the heart from hatred and the mind from worry. It is respect, and communication with yourself. Happiness is something you decide ahead of time, so deposit a lot of happiness in your Memory Bank and make constant withdrawals. Use these insights for selfempowerment and for renewed awareness.

We cannot become happy; we can only be happy

But let us assume that we are not so fortunate. What can we do to become happy? The short answer is: Nothing! In fact, the more actively we seek out happiness, the less likely we are to find it. This is because all forms of seeking pertain to the finite, egoic consciousness(our everyday identity), whereas true, permanent happiness is the unconditional Reality itself, which transcends the ego. So all we can hope for in our search for happiness are pleasurable experiences, and we already know that they do not last.

But when I say we can do nothing to become happy, this is only half the truth. It would be unfortunate if happiness were to elude us forever. Happily, it does not. It is accessible to us: We must simply be happy in every moment. I learnt this secret from one of my teachers, and I do not think I would ever have discovered it on my own. It sounds so simple−even paradoxical. Yet it is really profound wisdom. We cannot become happy; we can only be happy.

Most people have experienced moments of joy or delight at one time or another in their lives. That means we know what happiness feels like—it is what we experience when our whole body radiates with joyous energy and we feel like embracing everyone and everything. In those precious moments, we are in touch with something more real than our ordinary self or the world that our ordinary self experiences. Our ego is temporarily suspended, and our consciousness and energy are stepped up. We simply feel overwhelming happiness and bliss, which has the quality of love. We can always remember, with our whole body, those occasions of extraordinary joy.

Whenever we are fully present as the whole body, whenever we centre ourselves, we get in touch with the larger Reality in which we are immersed. And that larger Reality is neither depressed nor problematical. Then our energy starts to flow more freely, and we feel a deep sense of security. We intuit that our true identity is untouched by any conflict or pain.