Category: acceptance

The two enemies of happiness

(Image Source: 3.bp.blogspot.com/-wguivfJCxoA/T6QkmCGwjII/AAAAAAAADys/uvVBOy2ys_c/s1600/responsible+for+my+own+happiness.jpg) 

Who in this world doesn’t want happiness? All our life, we try to chase happiness. We try to look for it in our relationships, qualifications, possessions etc. and despite of having all these things, our search for happiness doesn’t seem to cease. Today, we are going to look into two biggest enemies of happiness and trust me, if you work on these two culprits, happiness will love to stay with you 🙂

  1. Expectations:- We have expectations from our spouses, our bosses, our in laws, our children, our neighbors, and almost everybody around us. We even expect the traffic on roads to be our way, we expect to get green lights on the way to office, we want the weather to be congenial to our needs. Isn’t it so impractical to expect the world to dance to our tunes. So, it is pretty obvious that we are bound to get upset whenever and wherever we set our expectations from others. Now, I know, its not easy ‘not to expect’ anything from anyone. But once we understand the relationship between expectations and setbacks from them, we can at least try to lower them, and just let the things and people be the way they are. Try ‘Accepting’ instead of ‘Expecting’.
  2.  Comparisons:- Most of us are unhappy because we think we have lower incomes, worse relationships, smaller cars, more problems COMPARED to our peers. Specially in this age of social media, it is too hard to not get influenced by the posts and pictures of your friends and acquaintances who seem to have all the happiness of the world. But remember, the only place where there is no tension and no problem at all is in the graves.  And I am sure you don’t want to be there, just to experience a problem free life (or death?)! So, you need to understand everybody has a different life, different capabilities and different journeys. And everybody is fighting a battle that you know nothing about. So, there is no point in comparing our lives to others. We all are blessed in some ways, and we all have our share of problems. So, enjoy your blessings happily and face your problems bravely.

I hope now you know which two culprits in your life are trying to kill happiness. You better stop reading and go arrest those demons before they attack your ‘happiness’ again! Good luck!

A walk for peace

95002417-B8A1-4929-80CF-40528BC991BFHave you ever met anyone in your life who doesn’t like nature, flowers, flowing rivers, starlit sky, mountains and lakes… At least I haven’t! No matter how depressed or upset you are, there is an instant relief and soothing feeling the moment you connect with nature.

Few days back, when I felt exhausted after handling my kids all day long and the endless house chores, I decided to pass the buck to my husband and go out for a lone walk. While I was relishing the cool breeze and beautiful colorful trees on my way, a thought struck me hard – if the green trees and blue sky created by God gives me peace and calms my mind, why His other and most amazing creation human being doesn’t do the same? Why did I run away from my kids and husband to get peace from nature? Aren’t they a part of this nature too? Isn’t your ‘hard to please’ mom in law or your grumpy boss created by the same Supreme power too? Then why don’t we feel the same tranquility in their presence?

Now, it took me a few days to get the answer but I am glad that I got! I came across a video which explained that we accept everything in nature as it is. We don’t judge a tree by how crooked its branches are. We don’t find faults in the waves at the beach. Nor do we complain of how tall the mountains stand. We don’t want to change how things look and work in nature. But for the people around us, we want everybody to change. We complain, we nag, we criticize, we judge constantly! We don’t accept them, their imperfections and their behavior. So how can we enjoy something which is not acceptable to us.

I loved the concluding words of that video – the moment we accept the universe as it is, we become happy effortlessly. So just by keeping in mind that our family members and the other people we deal with everyday, are a part of this universe too, we might start accepting them and we won’t have to run away from them for peace.