Stop Waiting
for Friday, for summer, for someone to fall in love with you,
for life.
for Friday, for summer, for someone to fall in love with you,
for life.
Happiness is achieved when you stop waiting for it and make the most of the moment you are in now.
We can complain because rose bushes have thorns or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.
Abraham Lincoln
Worrying is stupid. It's like walking around with an umbrella, expecting it to rain.
Wiz Khalifa
'When it rains, look for rainbows, when it's dark, look for stars.'
Some simple ways to improve your happiness
Make peace with your past so it doesn't ruin your present.
Your past doesn't determine your future; your attitude and the choices that you make today do.
What others think of you is none of your business.
It’s how much you value yourself and how important you think you are.
Time heals almost everything, so give things time.
For this, you have first got to learn to let go of things that hurt you. The scars left after healing make us who we are. They challenge us and force us to be stronger.
No one is the reason for your own happiness except you yourself.
Don’t expect other people to make you happy, if you do then you will only be unhappy.
Don't waste time and effort looking for peace and happiness in the world outside. It lies within you, if you search for it.
Happiness dips in middle age but only in the West
In countries like the UK and the US, life satisfaction followed a U-shape, dipping to a low in midlife. In Western countries, life satisfaction bottomed out between the ages of 45 and 54 before rising again.
Elderly people were generally happier despite poorer health as they had more free time and sufficient money.
In Africa, it was low throughout, and in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and Latin America it declined with age.
Prof A. Steptoe, UCL, A. Deaton, Princeton University & colleagues published in the Lancet (2014). Study using data from the Gallup World Poll of 160 countries.
Enjoy the coffee
A group of university alumni, well established in their careers, visited their old professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.
Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups: porcelain, plastic, glass, some plain-looking and some expensive, telling them to help themselves to coffee.
When they all had a cup of coffee in hand, the Prof. said, ‘Did you notice? All the nice-looking, expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones.While it's normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, this can be a source of problems and stress’.
'What all you really wanted was just coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the better cups and are eyeing each other’s cups.’
Now, if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life, but the quality of life doesn’t change. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we don't enjoy the coffee in it’ 'So don’t let the cups drive you…enjoy the coffee instead!'
Action for Happiness says 40% of our happiness is down to conscious choices we make.
They say there are ten steps you can take which 'consistently tend to make people's lives happier and more fulfilling'.
Do things for others
Connect with people
Take care of your body
Notice the world around you
Keep learning new things
Have goals to look forward to
Find ways to bounce back from difficulties
Take a positive approach
Become comfortable with who you are
Be part of something bigger that gives you purpose and meaning in life
Do I really need to be happy all the time?
When it comes to short-term happiness simple pleasures are best: a recent UK survey found that sleeping in a freshly made bed came top, followed by feeling the sun on your face.
Studies in the USA. found that once annual earnings reached $75,000 (about £55,000) increased money had no effect on people’s happiness and moods.
In a Harvard University survey, two other factors were identified: enjoying your work and life and investing in close relationships. Two-thirds of the people who stated they were ‘extremely happy’ in the survey gave a top rating to the importance of relationships.
The peacock and the crow
A crow lived in the forest and was completely satisfied with his life life. But one day he saw a swan. “This swan is so white,” he thought, “and I am so black. This swan must be the happiest bird in the world.”
He expressed his thoughts to the swan. “Actually,” the swan replied, “I was feeling that I was the happiest bird around until I saw a parrot, which has two colours. I now think the parrot is the happiest bird in creation.”
The crow then approached the parrot. The parrot explained, “I lived a very happy life until I saw a peacock. I have only two colours, but the peacock has many colours.”
The crow then visited a peacock in the zoo and saw that hundreds of people had gathered to see him. After the people had left, the crow approached the peacock. “Dear peacock,” the crow said, “you are so beautiful. Every day thousands of people come to see you. When people see me, they immediately shoo me away. I think you are the happiest bird on the planet.”
The peacock replied, “I always thought that I was the most beautiful and happy bird in the world. But because of my beauty, I am entrapped in this zoo. I have examined the zoo very carefully, and I have realised that the crow is the only bird not kept in a cage. So for past few days, I have been thinking that if I were a crow, I could happily roam everywhere.”
That’s our problem too. We make unnecessary comparison with others and so become sad. We don’t value what we have been given, leading to a cycle of unhappiness. Learn to be happy with what you have instead of looking at what you don’t have. There will always be someone who will have more or less than you have. The person who is satisfied with what he or she has, is the happiest person in the world.
