I found a very good article on Happiness! Enjoying reading!
How do we find joy and happiness? Can we be happy all the time?
Yes, you can be happy - now - and all the time! And it is a lot easier than you might think it is... Let's start with defining happiness. Just think back to a very happy moment in your life. How did you feel? Yes, you were joyful and playful - you were laughing and smiling. You felt relaxed and confident - totally at ease with yourself - completely satisfied.
These are all common characteristics of happy people. Of course we all have different tastes and preferences in life - these are individual choices and we should respect each person's right to choose for themselves. Based upon such 'happy characteristics', I've developed a Happy Quiz that will let you find out your HQ - or Happiness Quotient. It also serves as the prologue to my book "Yes I Am Happy Now!" and can be accessed, free of charge, at http://www.The-Happy-Side.com.
Probably you already feel what's coming next: In the same way as we can define a happy person, we can identify the common mistakes that prevent us from being happy and joyful. When you feel truly happy, you can't be angry at the same time - or sad and depressed. You can't be joyful and stressed out at the same time. In your happy moment you didn't worry about the future...
In "Yes I Am Happy Now!" I defined emotions as a re-active feeling. They are based upon a fact or an event from the past, or something anticipated in the future. For example, anger or fear. In a sense, they are not real although they certainly appear to be at times. Emotions like regrets, self pity, sadness, worries, anxiety and guilt are negative in the sense that they disrupt our goal of being a happier person. We can't be really happy when we are thrown around constantly by emotions.
As mentioned before, emotions appear to be real, but once we have learned to deal with them, they won't be anymore. I don't suggest to just suppress these emotions, to put them in a little corner of our mind and lock them up. No, on the contrary. How does it work? Let's take anger as an example because it is a primetime killer of joy and happiness. The less time we spend being annoyed or outright angry, the happier we will be!
Copyright 2000 Arne Klingenberg & The-Happy-Side.com
First published as a July 2000 feature article in http://www.SoulfulLiving.com
It may be freely distributed if unchanged and including this message.
Jackson
Break Free ... Be Happy ...
