How Happy Are You?

As we mature, we learn about the correlation between health and happiness.  We learn how to create moments that directly affect our overall well being, which isn’t just limited to whatever the current fashionable diet and exercise programs dictate.

There are so many well-marketed diet plans, books, and trends and one or more of them might work depending how focused the individual is in executing a goal.  Regardless of what goal is accomplished, any plan is dependent upon the action of the mind, and the mind instructs the will.  When we see results of plans working for people, we believe those plans must really be effective, but it wasn’t exclusively the plans, it was the action of the minds belonging to the people involved.  Example: when a person makes a choice to continue eating foods that cause obesity, that choice came from that person’s mind regardless of whether laziness is a characteristic trait.

We go to great measures to ensure we have healthy bodies, but sometimes we need to go extra steps to ensure we’re also creating or enhancing a healthier state of mind.  This can feel just as challenging as maintaining a healthy physical condition.  Both are important considerations people want to attain and sustain, but how serious are they at the end of each day?  How many events in a day have to occur to affect that positive frame of mind?

We want to enhance ourselves with self-improvement methods, and once we secure the information, are we really self-responsible enough to create self-motivation?  We don’t want to just mask overweight bodies and the accompanying emotional effects.  We want to become more confident to affect every aspect of our lives in a positive and rewarding manner that could ultimately increase the percentage rates of longevity.  The possibility of enhancing economic stability could also rise by reflecting a more positive image.  In other words, care about appearance because we do live in an image conscious society.  If we nurture our physical well-being consistently, several areas of our lives become affected, including the state of being happy.

The ability to encourage sustainable happiness is to incur repeated challenges of unhealthy patterns of behavior.  It’s one experiment after another to see if the positive effects can be incessantly managed for any extended period of time.  When a person’s mind has increased awareness of resistance of the negative effects of repeated challenges, happiness becomes more manageable.  Is happiness more challenging to maintain than a healthy body?  It depends because sometimes it’s difficult to strike a balance.  Sometimes what seems to be a weight loss struggle is actually a result of bad choices.  Likewise, sometimes circumstances either promote or dissuade happiness, but it’s possible the result of what type of behavior we want to unfold is a matter of choice.  Both methods of thinking and behavior begin with making choices and one choice can affect the other.

Happiness is not a thing you find , nor is it something you mass-produce like new glossy nail polish.  It is a state of awareness you choose, and when you choose happiness, you’re choosing to be empowered by deploying your mind.  The mind is a control box and we each have one.  We get to choose how responsive we’re going to be once we’ve invited an emotional experience, and once that experience provokes our emotion, guess what?  We get to decide how we’re going to respond--whether we accept that task with a smile, or whether we choose to allow the experience to be challenged or resisted.  If we’ve been conditioned to respond with skepticism, pessimism, or a fatalistic opinion, this doesn’t mean these patterns of behavior can’t be changed.  Our minds determine the outcome of our experiences and the effects of emotional aftermath.  Our minds are our personal control boxes.

Happiness is a product of the mind.  It is also a product of actions, the effect of societal trends, circumstances, inherent properties, the effects of living, adversarial conditions, and the effects of choices.

We’d like to believe we could reach some plateau where our jobs are great.  We want to embrace friendships and intimate relationships that are solid, and it would be great to affirm there are no problems we can’t overcome.  Overall, we are responsible for whether we maintain a happier outlook regardless of our set of circumstances, but sometimes we have experiences that are pretty challenging to overcome emotionally, physically, or financially.  Seeing the brighter side is to realize the burden of choice is on our back--that it’s our choice, not somebody else’s to carry a more positive outlook on life.  The effects of unpleasant or uncomfortable circumstances invite emotions which might affect our health, but the emotional result is based on processed thought involving choice to lesser or larger degrees.

Our minds can operate as a productive control box to counter disagreeable influences.  If we are capable of utilizing our own minds, then we should.  Outside influences have a strange way of intercepting the way an individual thinks especially if the individual has no method of thinking alone.  If a person is capable of processing thought, but is indecisive about owning responsibility for thoughts or actions, then this type of mind is going to establish a pattern of inviting outside influences.  The ways we choose to respond to actions and attitudes of others is our responsibility, not somebody else’s.

The varied definition of “happiness” is as varied as the topic of love.  We decide whether we are happy according to the way something or some person has made us feel , but it goes farther than that.  Our self-realization should include the fact that we do not need the presence of someone else to discover our inner happiness.  The outcome of a positive emotional experience affects our state of being within the margins of how we define “happy,” and the no-brainer is the fact that we’re in the driver’s seat--we get to decide whether we are happy, or whether we’re going to sustain happiness, or both.  Under normal circumstances, the varied definition also includes foremost how we respond to the effects of our families and our jobs.  Also, if we aren’t happy, what steps are we willing to take to promote happiness?

If we possess the ability to think through our problems, then striving to maintain a healthy outlook on life is attainable.  There will always be a situation where someone accents a negative attitude and that someone is who we’d like to avoid unless, of course, we see a way to enhance the possibility of turning the negative thoughts around.  It’s not people who bring us down, we bring ourselves down by not controlling our responses to the negative attitudes or actions that attempt to influence our minds.  Any capable mind has the power to overcome unwanted emotion .

The foundation of contentment is created in a person’s mind.  If a person worries about the next day, it makes it difficult to embrace the present moment because the person is restless.  Worry, to a large extent, is negative thinking.  Have you ever created disasters in your mind by way of imagination?  You stir your emotions by creating an extremely unfavorable scenario that never came into play.  If you don’t embrace your present moment because you’re worried about something that may not occur at all, you are similarly warding off present joy because of some fear there will be no future joy.  Each moment delivers reflections to be pondered so you can then refuel on the positive effects.  When you increase your level of awareness in this area, you will avoid disturbances that produce non-positive effects, you will disassociate with those who exhaust you with their complaints, and you will seek out those things in life that bring about sensations greater than any source of temporary gratification.  Contentment, after all, is fruition because it’s a state of mind taught by wisdom.  Cheerfulness is a form of spiritedness that influences other minds.  It is a healthy positive attitude that is easy to own and it is far better emotionally, psychologically and ultimately, physically, to be around those who strive to remain consistently cheerful.

For those who continually find fault in others, they possess minds that are full of complaints and criticism.  They seem to be void of contentment in their hearts and disregard their roles in enhancing virtues in others, not realizing there will come a moment in time when they will never be missed when they are gone.

Also, in regard to parenting, it’s healthier to cultivate young minds to strive to be cheerful.  If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it most of our adult lives that children are products of their environment.  It’s the right thing to create a positive environment with a strong positive influence.  This will cause children to become more self-confident as a result of the positive influence.  Self-responsible human beings and independent thinkers will then present itself as a possible end result!

Our minds possess the power to overcome many things we are faced with in everyday life.  For example, if we stop listening to those who complain all the time, they lose their audience.  When we create happier moments, we create memorable moments that are long lasting.  When we create moments of unkindness, bad intentional decisions, or dishonorable acts, we create moments we might regret such as disappointment, negative feelings, hurt, or a potential bad memory for somebody else.

Happiness is not tangible and its effects resulting from any tangible “thing” are short lived.  The strength of happiness is derived from emotion, a response and choice that already lives in us and each capable mind has the ability to display it with something as little as a smile or the sound of laughter.  It’s just too easy to complain.

Looking for happiness or creating it isn’t quite as meaningful as experiencing it--it’s within each of us and it’s waiting to come out!  We shouldn’t need something to look forward to all the time in order to have the experience.  We should also not hold the belief that we can only be happy with the presence of someone else.  This invites a type of co-dependency behavior.  Happiness--let it out and let it in.  Try becoming its revolving door, then embrace the effects of your newly created self-empowered mind!

The skill of developing self-contentment nearly becomes an art as it becomes a natural habit after practicing behavioral changes.  The changes can affect several areas in a person’s life--health, family, jobs and other relationships.  Once a person becomes more familiar with practicing awareness concerning response patterns, a habit develops that becomes more natural over time.  A level of awareness becomes more enhanced.  A mind becomes more empowered.  All it takes is capability, desire, choice and action.  Your attitude can set the tone for your whole day, and someone else’s, so why not tell yourself that you’re going to be as content as possible especially if you can?