Your Map For The Pursuit Of Happiness – Genuine Happiness Comes From Within

Article by Deanna Mascle

If your pursuit of happiness does not lead you to genuine happiness then perhaps you are missing one of the most important keys to personal happiness — loving yourself.

Life isn’t the sweetest candy. Sometimes, when I feel like the world is just too heavy, I look around and find people who continued to live fascinating and wonderful lives. And then thoughts come popping into my mind like bubbles from nowhere – “How did their life become so adorably sweet? How come they still can manage to laugh and play around despite a busy stressful life?” Then I pause and observed for awhile… I figured out that maybe, they start to work on a place called ‘self’.

So, how does one become genuinely happy? Step 1 is to love yourself.

My theology professor once said that “loving means accepting.” To love oneself means to accept that you are not a perfect being, but behind the imperfections must lie a great ounce of courage to be able to discover ways on how to improve your repertoire to recover from our mistakes.

Genuine happiness also pertains to contentment. When you are contented with the job you have, the way you look, with your family, your friends, the place you live in, your car, and all the things you now have – truly, you know the answer to the question “how to be genuinely happy.”

When we discover a small start somewhere from within, that small start will eventually lead to something else, and to something else. But if you keep questioning life lit it has never done you any good, you will never be able to find genuine happiness.

I believe that life is about finding out about right and wrong, trying and failing, wining and losing. These are things that happen as often as you inhale and exhale. Failure, in a person’s life has become as abundant and necessary as air. But this should not hinder us from becoming happy.

How to be genuinely happy in spite all these? I tell you… every time you exert effort to improve the quality of life and your being, whether it is cleaning up your room, helping a friend, taking care of your sick dog, fail on board exams and trying again, life gives you equivalent points for that.

Imagine life as a big score board like those which are used in the NFLs. Every time you take a step forward, you make scoring points. Wouldn’t it be nice to look at that board at the end of each game and think to yourself “Whew! I got a point today. I’m glad I gave it a shot.”, instead of looking at it all blank and murmur “Geez, I didn’t even hit a score today. I wish I had the guts to try out. We could have won!” and then walk away.

Genuine happiness isn’t about driving the hottest Formula 1 car, nor getting the employee of the year award, earning the highest 13th month pay, or beating the sales quota. Sometimes, the most sought after prizes in life doesn’t always go to the fastest, the strongest, the bravest or not even the best. So, how do you become genuinely happy? Every one has his own definition of ‘happiness’. Happiness for a writer may mean launching as much best selling books as possible. Happiness for a basketball rookie may mean getting the rookie of the year award. Happiness for a beggar may mean a lot of money. Happiness for a business man may mean success. So, really now, how do we become genuinely happy? Simple. You don’t have to have the best things in this world. Its about doing and making the best out of every single thing. When you find yourself smiling at your own mistake and telling your self “Oh, I’ll do better next time”, you carry with you a flame of strong will power to persevere that may spread out like a brush fire. You possess a willingness to stand up again and try – that will make you a genuinely happy person.

When you learn to accept yourself and your own faults. You pass step 1 in the project “how to become genuinely happy”.For as long as you know how to accept others, you will also be accepted. For as long as you love and know how to love, you will receive love ten folds back.

Again, throw me that same question “how to become genuinely happy?”. I’ll refer you to a friend of mine who strongly quoted- “Most of us know that laughter is the best medicine to life’s aches and pain. But most of us don’t know that the best kind of laughter is laughter over self. Coz then you don’t just become happy… you become free.”

About the Author

Learn more about the Pursuit of Happiness and Finding True Happiness at http://smilesbydawggone.com where you can download a free ebook about Happiness

The Pursuit of Happyness – How Can we be Happy?

Article by Josh Lipovetsky

In Pursuit of Happyness, Will Smith plays Chris Gardner, a motivated man living on the last of his means. Chris is constantly looking for a consistent quality of life, but seems to get beaten down at every road. A few times throughout the movie, Gardner expresses his thoughts on happiness, and whether or not it is actually attainable. Happiness can be looked at in many ways, but I will outline two of them: Short-Term and Long-Term happiness.

Short-Term happiness is achievable by anyone. Regardless of your age, gender, social status, economic status, etc. It can be experienced everyday. The exciting feeling of getting that paycheck, the excitement of watching your favorite movie, the internal joy of expressing gratitude, or it can be the motivational nudge received when you complete an activity/goal. We may not notice, but feelings of happiness occur often throughout our lives, we just need to know how to look for it. It can strike us when we need it most: In the Pursuit of Happyness, Chris gains short-term happiness when he sells each bone density scanner for 0. It is the happiness that he will be able to sustain his family for another month. And it also provides him with enough happiness to accomplish his long term goal of becoming a stock broker.

Long-Term happiness is much more difficult to notice in our everyday lives. 60% of our LT (long-term) happiness is predetermined at birth (genes, heredity), and the other 40% is determined by what we do in our lives. Some people are genetically inclined to be more happy than others. But regardless, we all have our long-term goals, set with the intention of making us happier. We tell ourselves, “I am going to finally be happy when I achieve this goal”. But when the goal is achieved, the happiness soon goes away, and we are looking for more things to make us happy. Long-Term happiness is very difficult to notice; and is a gift of living. Try to monitor your happiness levels for a day, and try to notice how happy you are.

We are all different in virtually unlimited ways, but we are all looking for happiness. Happiness can be experienced in life everyday, in both the short and long term. Look for both, and be twice as happy. The Pursuit of Happyness inspired me to write about the different types of happiness in our lives. Whether short-term or long-term, we all have something to be happy about.

About the Author

http://www.relevantreviews.net

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