You probably don’t think that your life is tailored to a model, but in many ways it is. We base whole departments of our everyday life on received opinion, second-hand beliefs, and experiences growing up. These gather into a model that you follow, usually as the course of least resistance.
A perfect example is the issue of happiness and how to achieve it. The American way of life defines happiness along lines that are quickly being outmoded:
You will be happy if you consume as much as possible.
You will be happy if you have money, the more the better.
You will be happy if you can distract yourself with video games, television, the Internet, and movies.
You will be happy if you fall in love with “the right one” and raise a family in a house you own, paid for with a secure, high-paying job.
The pandemic, inflation, and economic instability have affected all of these factors, but for decades, the traditional model of happiness has eroded, a major contributor being the higher levels of stress we subject ourselves to.
Instead of ignoring these trends, why not go to the root of the problem, which is that we need a new way of being happy. The problem with the conventional things that are supposed to make you happy is that they can be taken away. When you depend on anything outside yourself to make you happy, your happiness is vulnerable.
A new way to be happy would be based on the following principles:
Life has a purpose. When you live up to that purpose, inner happiness develops
Inner happiness can’t be taken away.
In place of consumerism, you can base everyday happiness on relationships.
In place of distractions, you can fill your time with activities that make your heart grow.
You can find a place beyond fear that crises and anxiety cannot touch.
You can find a place of peace that stress cannot wear out.
Wellness will make your body happy.
If people took a look at their lives and made real attempts to follow these seven principles, a stable, permanent kind of happiness would be born. Let me go through each point briefly.
1. Life has a purpose. For some people, the purpose-driven life has acquired Christian overtones. That is by no means necessary. Every life needs a meaning, and the more inspiring that meaning, the better. What erodes happiness more than anything else is the loneliness and emptiness that results when you feel that your life has no meaning. Millions of people live by the slogan “Family is everything,” but it’s not. Meaning and purpose are everything.
2. Inner happiness. We hear this phrase a lot, to the point that it becomes meaningless. All those models on TV look as if they gained inner happiness from a slim waist, the right makeup, good hair, and being young. Real inner happiness is easy to measure, however. If you can sit by yourself, doing nothing to distract yourself, needing no one, and still feel happy, then you have achieved inner happiness. It is marked by feeling safe, knowing that you are enough, and finding a core of peace and calm. I sometimes put all these factors into a single phrase: You are truly happy if being here is enough.
3. Focus on relationships instead of consumerism. America is a consumer economy driven by insatiable appetites for whatever is bigger, better, newer, and more expensive. You and I aren’t going to change that fact, but we can see through the glossy promise that consumerism makes you happy. It doesn’t. Nor do heaps of money. Studies show that after a person has achieved enough money to cover life’s necessities, the returns begin to diminish. The very rich are not happier than the rest of us, nor are the winners of lotteries. In both cases, a huge surplus of money tends to bring out psychological flaws such as anxiety, greed, and a fear of not having enough.
If you define yourself by what you own, trouble lies ahead, because you have left a hole where a self needs to be. It is far more important to have a secure, loving relationship that mirrors your true self. I know that this sounds much harder than buying a new computer or a faster car, because it is. But relationships can bring inner fullness; expensive things simply wear out.
4. Stop being distracted. Distractions are nice for whiling away the time, but the more hours you spend bent over a video game or the Internet, the less time you have for things that matter. All of us know that having a full heart is important, but it requires time and attention. As children, we counted on our parents to be warm-hearted. Secure in that knowledge, we could play and be carefree. But when you grow up, no one can replace your own heart and its needs. By “heart” I mean emotional fulfillment, compassion, kindness, bonding -- the whole emotional core of life. Distractions will never bring these things to you, and they are among the most necessary aspects of a happy life.
5. The place beyond fear. Modern life is marked by instant communication and global outreach. These are good things, but they also make everyday life seem much more fearful. We live in a world where total strangers living far away can harm us. There is no place safe from fear -- except inside. You can’t do much to reduce the causes of external worry; bad people and bad things have always been with us. But you can take care of your own tendency to be afraid, worried, and anxious. There is a place of safety inside, and if you can find it, you will find the kind of happiness that bad people and bad things cannot shake.
6. Peace instead of stress. We all know that life is stressful, but many people think of stress as an outside element, such as bad traffic, pressure at work, kids who won’t pay attention, etc. Actually, stress is a response. How you react to the outside world is far more important than any outside stressor. There is a stress-free zone inside you, a place of peace. When you find this inner core of the self and learn to know it, external stress will not make you its victim. I don’t mean that you zone out and contemplate your navel, to use the old cliché. When you find your own peace, outside stressors will still exist, but you will have a far different response to them. You will know what to fix, what to put up with, and what to walk away from. Those are very basic decisions if you want to maintain your own happiness.
7. A happy body based on wellness. As part of the American way of life, people wait until they are sick before turning to fixes, meaning drugs or surgery. We ignore wellness and prevention after decades of being told how valuable they are. Their value hasn’t diminished. In fact, your body wants you to be happy and is constantly sending signals of either contentment or distress. By turning our backs on our bodies, we are depriving ourselves of a major ally in the campaign to find happiness. Wellness is a mind-body alliance. What I’m proposing is that you form such an alliance instead of finding ways to blame or be ashamed of your body.
In the end, wholeness is the keyword if you want the kind of happiness that can’t be taken away. I’ve written much more about this in a book, The Ultimate Happiness Prescription, but here in capsule form, you’ve heard what it takes to be happy in a new way. Having spent so much time trying to be happy the old way—and not truly succeeding—we should realize that there is a better, life-changing alternative.
Namaste,
Deepak