How to Find Happiness: 7 Timeless Tips from the Last 2500 Years

Published September 26th, 2007 in Personal Development and Lessons I have learned from....

What do you want?

A great job?

A fulfilling relationship?

Go sailing around the Pacific for a few years in your very own luxurious boat?

Or just to get along better with yourself?

Perhaps you want one of more of those things. But beneath those and many common wishes, if you take it a step further, often lies a wish to find happiness.

One good way to find a few useful, life-improving and time-tested tips is to look back. To look way back through history. To find ideas that have arisen in minds over and over the last few thousand years. Here are seven such ideas about how you can find happiness. Maybe you´ll find them helpful.

1. You choose.

Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Abraham Lincoln

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

The world of those who are happy is different from the world of those who are not.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

How your view yourself and your world are conscious choices and habits. The lens you choose to view everything through determines how you will interpret what is happening. And from your interpretation you act. And all of this becomes your life.

You can choose to find happiness in small, everyday things. You can choose to interpret what happens in a positive way. Or in a negative way.

And your choices controls much of how much happiness your will find and create in your life.

2. Focus on the present, not yesterday or tomorrow.

When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.
Helen Keller

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.
James Oppenheim

You only have now. And now. And now. Yesterday is a memory and you cannot change it. Tomorrow is just a fantasy in your mind right now. So live more in the now, focus on the present moment and today. Think and worry less about yesterday and tomorrow. Otherwise you might miss a great deal of happiness that is available to you right now.

3. Don’t forget to be grateful.

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.
Frederick Keonig

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
Marcel Proust

One of the simplest and quickest ways to turn a negative and sour mood into a more positive one is to be grateful.

A few things you can feel gratitude for are for instance: The sunshine and the weather. Your roof. Your health. A good TV-show, a movie or a song. Your friends, family, co-workers and just about anyone walking down the street.

Just try if for a minute and see how it changes how you feel. And it’s a win/win solution. You feel great because you are grateful about your world and the people you are grateful for feel great too because they feel appreciated. So don´t forget about gratitude or you may forget about the happiness that is already in your life.

4. Help someone else find happiness.

Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.
Buddha

If you want happiness for an hour — take a nap.
If you want happiness for a day — go fishing.
If you want happiness for a year — inherit a fortune.
If you want happiness for a lifetime — help someone else.
Chinese Proverb

Happiness is like a kiss. You must share it to enjoy it.
Bernard Meltzer

This is certainly one of the most popular ideas I’ve found about happiness. And it might sound clichéd and empty. But it works very well. When you make someone else happy – by, for example, helping them with something - you can sense, see, feel and hear it. And that happy feeling flows back to you. And then, if you’d like, you can boost you own ego by thinking something like: ”Wow, I really made him/her happy!”.

And since the Law of Reciprocity is strong there is another upside. People will feel like giving back to you. Or they might feel like helping/sharing it with someone else. And so the two – or more – of you keep spreading the happiness.

5. Get rid of a couple of your less valuable desires.

If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.
Epicurus

You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.
Eric Hoffer

That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.
Henry David Thoreau

If you want less instead of more, more, more then your desires are more likely to be fulfilled. And if you throw away a few of those desires that you may not really want or need that much anyway you’ll probably start to feel less stressed and worried. This is a calmer and better place to be to enjoy your day (tip #2) and to take the time discover the happiness that is already in your life (tip #3).

6. Do what you like to do.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
Albert Schweitzer

Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

A pretty obvious one. But it’s still easy to trap yourself into doing what you don’t want to for many, many hours. And seldom do what you really love to do. And I guess this one ties into tip #1. You may not be able to choose to do what you want to do right now. Or for many hours each day or week. But you almost always have a choice to do more of what you really want to do. There is always time. Or time you can free up. You have a choice.

7. Or at least do something.

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.
Benjamin Disraeli

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.
So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain

One of the best ways to not find happiness is just to hold yourself back and do nothing. Seldom show up. Paralyze yourself through over analysis. It’s not always easy to take action, it can be scary and hard and difficult. But if you don’t take action you’ll be missing out on a lot. Including many moments, people and experiences that can bring you a lot of happiness.

 

The difference between love and friendship

Write you must

A long time I have been ccp –iying the posts.. nothing original straight from the heart has been written …  but I have been so busy doing practically nothing. The time spent in the daily tasks that seem so mundane devours up all my free time and to get a release as we all need from time to time upon occasion, I watch TV – yeah .. but not everything – just Gray’s Anatomy… man I am in love with that – the characters especially the interns, Dr Bailey is someone to reckon with – she is a wonderful character, balanced, collected – compassionate. Dr Yang – some may call her semi-robotic, but her practicality and hard work has impressed me, we always look up to people who possess certain qualities that we wish we had in ourselves, her composure – opaque expression is something I wish I could get, no matter what she is going through – nothing shows on her face – no matter what. 

 

The beautiful friendship that Meredith and Christina share – is so rare and beautiful, its something to be cherished. This is what gives meanings to certain relationships in life.  The most beautiful relationship and the most steady one besides family of course –  it’s nothing else but ‘Friendship’ .   No matter when you connect – even if its been ages you get to hear from your friends, you pick up from where you left off, its as if you were never apart – you just catch up on the highlights of each other’s lives. 

 

Phases in lives happen, people get busy, and now fortunately for me I have also gotten busy – I am writing , its boring tedious job – but I am hanging in there – it will culminate, this too shall pass – baby – change is the law of life, nothing lasts forever, change is the only lasting entity. The sooner it is accepted the better off you will be. Things come and go – same happens with people, phases hit you in waves, but they too shall pass, but loving bonds stay the same – no matter what.

 

All said and done cuz after everything – in the end -life DOES go on!

 

  

Transformation

Light does not conquer darkness by pushing the darkness out of the way. Rather, the light comes into the darkness and transforms it with brilliant, positive energy.

In the same way, the obstacles in life are not conquered by fighting them on their own terms or attempting to push them out of the way. The best way to move past a difficult situation is to transform it with positive, productive energy.

No matter how much you push against the darkness it will not go anywhere. Yet the moment you shine your light, the darkness is no more.

When you fight against your problems, all it usually accomplishes is to make them stronger and give them more validity. That's certainly not what you would ever intend.

Instead, seek to transform those problems, those difficult situations, by virtue of your own positive values and efforts. Focusing on what you're working toward is far better than being obsessed with whatever you think you're against.

Rather than struggling against the situation, give the best you have to it. Rather than fighting darkness with more darkness, transform that darkness by letting your light shine.

-- Ralph Marston

 

 

 

 

Are you your own worst enemy?

Who talks you out of more things than anyone else? Your spouse? Your parents? Your boss? Your lawyer? If you're like most people, the answer probably is: yourself.

You have an "inner voice" that has opinions on everything you do. That inner voice has its own perspective on you as a person, and is acutely aware of your limitations and shortcomings. Every time you attempt to step out of your box, to try something new and challenging, that inner voice starts in on you. "You can never do that," it says.

Well, that inner voice is wrong. You can do it if you set your mind to it, no matter what has happened in the past. In fact, your biggest obstacle is convincing yourself that you can. The first step in doing that is to acknowledge that the "inner voice" exists, and then take steps to counteract it.

The inner voice will always be there. You can't get rid of it. But you can keep it from dominating your thoughts and actions by supplying yourself with plenty of positive input.

Get yourself around positive, future-oriented people. Read books, listen to tapes, talk back to the voice and say, "Yes I can!" Dwell on the possibilities, not the risks. Model the behavior of successful people. Take action toward your goals. Remind yourself of your accomplishments and of the challenges you've overcome in the past. Write down your goals and review them at least once a day. Find your purpose in life keep yourself focused on it.

You can accomplish great things if you'll just let yourself do it.

-- Ralph Marston