What Makes You Happy?
One of the ways you can test your happiness is by testing your unhappiness. Sound strange?
Okay, here's how it works. (Warning! this is a very powerful exercise so be prepared)
Think of something that would make you unhappy. For example: losing your house, or losing your family. Reflect on that for a moment. What would your feelings be? Sad? Miserable? Lonely? Suicidal?
Now really go for it and try to imagine the thing that would make you unhappy.
When I do this exercise. I imagine losing my family and I really do get to the point of being tearful (okay I admit it, I do get tearful).
Now, come out of the scene you were in and look at what you have. For example: if you pictured losing your family, look at your family now. How does it make you feel?
I always feel extremely grateful and look at them in a different way as if I have been given a second chance with them. This feeling lasts a long time before I slip back into my normal loving self. However, what it does is let me be thankful and never take them for granted.
So it is with life. We are so busy chasing the rainbow of happiness we forget what makes us happy now. We have to get that feeling back.
So many of us are working hard to make money, working long hours, nearly killing ourselves, all in the pursuit of happiness for us and our families when in fact if we loved our families first and loved the job we were doing we would find that happiness here and now and not in the future.
Be Thankful
How many of us have seen something on TV and said, "It really makes you appreciate what you've got?"
I bet most of us have said this. However, how long has it taken us to forget this and get on with our lives and forget what we really have?
For any of our dreams to happen in the future, and they will if we intend them long enough and work at it, we have to be thankful for what we have in the here and now.
I am thankful for my wife, my two boys, my dog, my house, my job, my mum, dad, sisters nieces and nephews and my health and I am thankful too for you - for reading this.
What are you thankful for?
Take care; try it. BE HAPPY. STAY HAPPY!
Written in 2009 by Divyesh Pradeep