THIS. This is what it takes to be happy anywhere in the world

Do not miss this piece. I assure you that this will be one of the best pieces you have ever read in your life, because I am going to give it everything I know. Don’t miss reading it till the end. You may miss the chance to lead a happy life. Let’s get started.

What is happiness?

Happiness is a feeling of completion, of satisfaction, of gratitude, of having done something worthwhile. That’s why happiness is complex. It is a complex feeling, which is the sum total of everything that manifests in your life.

Happiness is the only output we produce in life. Everything that we do, in an input to producing that output.

Why is happiness important?

Happiness is important because the opposite of happiness is pain. Since you are born, you should be happy. You should be able to enjoy life and find meaning, which would make you happy. Without happiness, life is meaningless. Once you find happiness, you can share it with others.

You can only share what you have.

Now that we have established what happiness is and why it is important, let us get down to how to find happiness.

1.    Be grateful you produce of a fuck

Man or a woman is the output of sex. Your parents had sex. You were born. Did you earn your life? If you didn’t earn your life, what right do you have to be ungrateful towards it? At any time you evaluate what’s going on with your life, considering the fact that you did not earn your life, you will be in the profit column in the profit and loss account of your life.

You are reading this on LinkedIn-you must be grateful for your education, for access to internet, for stumbling upon this article. Be grateful.

Gratitude is the first step to peace and happiness.

2.    Desperately focus on the positive

How bad is your life right now? How bad could it be? No matter what’s happening, you can focus your mind on the fact that you are alive, that you have seen a bunch of days, that you have lived much more than so many people who didn’t. Focus on what you have at any moment in time and that will make you feel good about your life. If it doesn’t, you are a sadist. I can’t help sadists.

3.    Stop comparing yourself to others

Consider this-besides identical twins, all of us look different. Nature is incredible! It had made us different. If nature intended us to be different, why on earth would you compare your life to others? If nature intended us to lead similar lives, it would have made people similar. But it didn’t.

Your life is different than that of your family, your relatives, your school, colleague and graduate school peers. Live your life. Stop comparing your life to that of others.

4.    Reject what is fake

Have you noticed yourself giving a fake smile to someone you don’t like? Are you in a job where you have to pretend a lot? Do you pretend to be someone you are not many times of the day?

Every time you fake a feeling, it becomes a habit. Pretense has become an unfortunate culture in our society. People are pretending to be happy when they are not. People are pretending to enjoy relationships they don’t. So many people are just living off a pretense!

Be brutally honest with yourself. If you are happy, admit it to yourself. If it sucks, say it to yourself. You can solve what you admit to be a problem.

5.    Invest time in understanding yourself

You will only be able to live a fulfilling life when you invest time in understanding yourself. Spend time in thinking. Time you spend thinking is not wasted. Read about great lives. Read autobiographies of great men and women. Even if you don’t reach their level in life, you will have understood something about yourself from their struggle. All great life stories have been stories of struggle and victory over it in some way or the other.

Make time for yourself. There is nothing selfish about it. Even if it’s selfish, it’s good selfishness. Travel alone. It is one of finest ways of spending time with yourself.

6.    Dump success

Success is bullshit. I will say it again. Success is bullshit. Success is an external measure of life. The society values success by looking at what you have. They can only look at what you have externally-a house, a car or a family or anything else that is tangible.

Happiness is not tangible. It is intangible. You feel it inside of you. Dump success. Success is not a worthy goal.

Why would you live your life to prove something to a bunch of people called society who have nothing to do with your life? You need to cater to the person inside of you. Always be asking yourself-is that person happy? That person is your essence, your soul. It will die when you die. No souls are wandering around the ether.

7.    Stop giving a fuck to the world

From now on, absolutely stop caring what people think of you. If they are thinking of you, they are wasting their time, unless they love you, in which case, you should care.

The only people who matter in your life are the ones who love you and the ones you love. Both these sets must be the same people. Why would you be wasting your time otherwise?

Stop giving a fuck to the rest of the world, unless you are getting paid for it.

8.    Lead a passionate life

Of late, I have started using the word passion over love. To my mind, passion is love gone mad. Love that cannot be stopped anymore. Love, that won’t give up. Love, that is limitless.

Once you begin to understand who you are, you will also start understanding things you are passionate about, things you cannot NOT do, things and people you care about. Avoid doing everything and everyone else.

Life is too short to spend on things and people you are not passionate about.

9.    Do not sacrifice yourself over others        

The society and the religious fraternity, irrespective of religion, places a lot of value on selflessness and on self-sacrifice. I don’t know if you have read the works of Ayn Rand. If you have, you will know where I am getting at.

Do not sacrifice your happiness for the happiness of others. Please try to understand that you cannot do this anyway. It is a wasted effort for everyone involved. Do not live your life obliging anyone and do not take favors. Everybody is living for themselves, even if they admit or not.

For example, many people in India get into marriages to make their parents happy for a year or two and then they curse them for the rest of their lives. Who got happy in the process?

Self-sacrifice is dumb shit. Learn to make yourself happy first. If it doesn’t make people who love you happy as well, they don’t really love you.

10. Make the world a happier place

I am on a mission. I want to make the world an inspired and visibly happier place.

Does this sound paradoxical to a previous point/s? It’s not. Let me explain. You can only make the world a happier place when you understand what happiness means to you, when you know who you are and when you know how to discover it for yourself. This is how the process looks like, roughly. 

Find happiness for yourself →Understand the process →Share it with the world

This is exactly what I am trying to do with this piece. You will feel enormous amounts of happiness when you will see others happy because of you. It feels amazing.

There is almost nothing that is more satisfying than the feeling that you made someone happy.

This is all I have for you tonight. It’s beyond midnight and I have been writing this piece for over 2 hours. It will take another half an hour to post it. But I know one thing, if I die tonight, I died following my mission.

Hit me up if you have questions or you want to connect with me. I am a writer, speaker, stand-up comedian based in Delhi, India. I would love to speak to you about happiness. It’s been a puzzle I have been working on solving all my life.

Amar

https://amarvani.in/