There are certain subjects that you can talk with friends about endlessly without getting bored or reflect upon privately over and over and once done, feel the need to do it again.

The pursuit of happiness is a global pastime and fraught with perpetual carrot dangling.

Femcompetitor Magazine has written about it before from the perspective of being categorically happy.

Fem Wrestlers: One Step Closer To Real Happiness femcompetitor.com/?p=3008

It’s worth a second effort and probably a third.

The eternal quest.

There are a number of approaches to guide closer to our ever changing destination and if you can glean just one idea that help change your life and guide you towards your own personal happiness, then it’s worth the reading trip.

I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition.……. Martha Washington

The first time we approached the subject we highlighted the thoughts of one of our favorite Motivational Speakers, Mr. Robert Chen who produces a fantastic blog entitled http://www.embracepossibility.com/blog/

This time we are going to entertain the thoughts of someone from another walk of life with at least 15,000 hits on her blog. She has written six articles and appears to be well-received. Her name is Sanjana Uthappa.

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE HAPPY

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.…Dalai Lama

All of us want to be happy and are in constant pursuit of it. But it seems to be all elusive. It comes for a while but is fleeting! It is probably like catching the clouds. When we were kids, we thought being an adult was fun. But ask most adults and they will tell you how much they miss those care free days of childhood! They badly want to be kids again!

When one is unemployed they yearn for a job and pray for anything to come by their way. When one gets a job, the thrill and excitement wanes with time. And then before one realizes it, unhappiness and discontent about the new job creeps in.

Either it’s the supervisor or the compensation, but one conveniently manages to find a reason.
The single ones envy the married while the married look back at the great times they had being single!
We human beings are constantly looking to have what we don’t. Is that a problem? Well, not really!
Without this attribute, Mankind could not have managed all the marvelous inventions and discoveries over thousands of years.

This desire to have more, to have better things drives us to perform and is the engine of our progress.

While desires are good, it is dangerous when we get obsessed with them. So much so, that we ignore everything else and eventually land up being unhappy.

We have become good at counting our failures or miseries when we should in fact be counting our blessings. How many times have we praised this great miracle called life? How many times have we bothered to count our blessings in the form of family, friends, eyes, ears, hands legs etc.? If we just close our eyes for 5 minutes and try living our life we will realize that we are blessed! We take the goodness of life for granted!

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.…….Denis Waitley

Happiness is not just about success in our goals, it is about learning to enjoy what we already have while still dreaming and working for the unachieved, bigger better things! Next time we feel bad about the big hurdle on our way in achieving the next big goal in life, let us take a minute to appreciate the wonderful aroma of the morning coffee, watch the birds fly up in the sky, gaze at the sky and look at the countless stars and the ever changing cloud, spend some time to smell the flowers or take a look at the blooming flowers or the humming bee! If that doesn’t work, we could reflect on some good incidents in life or an instance of success in our life!

Each one of us would surely have some achievement or some incident in life that makes us feel great or proud or happy! If that too doesn’t excite us because we think our misery is worse, let us think of the soldier who is willing to give his life for the nation just so that you and I can be safe! Let us think of the laborer who works many more hours with no hope of a better life while struggling to barely make enough to feed himself and his family.

Hopefully, this will help us realize how blessed we are. This will then re – energize us and help us chase our dreams with renewed vigor! Great pleasure is in some way our ability to count our blessings and not count our miseries!

While there are many ways to happiness, chasing dreams while being excited about all the wonderful gifts of life, let’s not forget the struggles of others and the vastness of the cosmos and the minuteness of the self; it would surely take us in the right direction.

Thank you Sanjana.

Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.…………….Ayn Rand

As a reminder we are clearly aware there are basic building blocks that make us all happier. The educational site study.com speaks to that foundation. “Research shows that the best indicator of a person’s happiness is the quality of his or her close relationships. Whether you’re talking about romantic relationships, family dynamics, or simply close friendships, the happier you are in your social engagements, the happier you are in general.

Besides close relationships, there are two other things that predict happiness in people: having a job or hobby that they love and that challenges them and helping others through volunteer work, random acts of kindness or another type of prosocial behavior.

All three of these things make sense. I’ll bet you weren’t very surprised that solid relationships, engaging ways to spend your time and prosocial behavior all contribute to happiness.

But what about money? After all, if you don’t have any money, it’s very easy to believe that lots of money will make you happy. But that’s not what psychologists have found.

Once your basic necessities are met, research has shown that additional money does not have a lot to do with happiness. So, while billionaires may fly on private jets to luxurious spas all over the world, it doesn’t mean that they are any happier than people who drive 10-year old cars and fly coach.

However, focusing on money and material things can make you profoundly unhappy. Research has shown that people who put a lot of emphasis on money and things are not as happy as non-materialistic people.”

Okay, that is your tasty morsel for now and we say for now because we know that for many of us who are less stable internally than others, our ship to happiness is rarely on calm waters. We still need a tug boat or a few buoys to get us closer.

The sun breaking through the clouds is helpful too.

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Sources: brainyquote.com, Wikipedia, fciwomenswrestling.com, fciwomenswrestling2.com, FCI Elite Competitor, https://femcompetitor.com, photos thank you Wikimedia Commons.

http://study.com/academy/lesson/research-on-happiness-what-makes-people-happy.html

http://www.embracepossibility.com/blog/