The Art of Happiness

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony” 
- Mahatma Gandhi

Happiness is so special, that many people spend their entire life searching for it. It comes in many different forms for some people, but how do you know what genuinely makes you happy? Lately, I have been strategically focusing on what makes me happy and one of the first steps that I took was analyzing what makes me unhappy and how I can fix it.

Happiness can be defined as a mental or emotional state of well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions, ranging from contentment to intense joy. The golden thread of this definition and almost any definition you find for happiness will be emotion. 

The terms emotion and emotional have taken on a connotation usually associated with sadness or pity. This correlation has blinded us from understanding how to use our emotions to increase the happiness we thirst for. As humans, we want to feel important in every situation and feel a sense of external value unique to ourselves. One way of doing this is by examining our emotions and figuring out what things give us happy emotions versus the things that give us unhappy emotions.

These emotions that dictate our happiness do not reside in external sources such as money, jobs, popularity, or people. Happiness is dictated by the relationships you have with these external sources. You can control your happiness easily by dictating your relationships with the things you have in your life by simply viewing them for what they are instead of viewing them for what you would like them to be. I know that may sound a little confusing but let me explain.

Often, I found myself complaining and stressing over the things I didn’t like about myself. For example, one thing I became unhappy with was my weight. I remember buying a bunch of expensive clothing during my first summer internship, only to be disgusted with the way I looked in them.

In response to this issue, I began to examine my relationships with my diet and exercising (which were piss-poor). I started to do more research on nutrition, weight-lifting, and dieting. Instead of complaining to myself every day, I began working towards improving the relationship. 

I started to see a huge improvement over time and started to fall in love with the process. This change did not occur overnight, because I was attacking an obstacle that had plagued me for years. But with consistent effort, I was able to drop 30 lbs in 3 months. Now, I’m obsessed with nutrition and exercise because of the happiness it brought to my life. I had to restructure my relationship with diet and exercise to gain genuine happiness in that area of my life.

Improving the relationships you have with things in your life is vital to being happy. We often form a habit of being unhappy without even realizing it. Subconsciously, we begin to settle for being unhappy because we’ve been unhappy (with whatever) for so long. The quote, “You are what your habits are,” relays this concept and is something I live by.

If you’re unhappy with something in your life, take a minute, and examine your habits and the relationship you have with it. Chances are you have developed habits that you do not notice, habits that are negating from your ascension. If you want a higher GPA, examine your relationship with studying. If you want to stop drinking, examine your relationship with alcohol. Everything is rooted in habit.

This is a concept of controlling your emotions and habits to improve the relationship you have with things in your life. A wise man once said "control the controllables". Once you begin to take control of the things in your life and removed the power from external sources, I promise you will feel much happier and get more out of life. Remove the “what if” and become more dedicated to your happiness and you will see an elevation in your life.

I have many ideas on being happy and sincerely want to help people feel happier and be confident in their everyday lives. Helping people become happier is something I have always been interested in and it inspired me to start this blog. I know how easy it is to be unhappy and lose yourself, and I want to prevent people from getting stuck in that unhappy state that I was once in. So always remember to make your happiness a priority because only you can give yourself true happiness.

Bless Up,

- young king

be sure to leave a comment. I would love to hear your perspective.