If you wish to be happier than you are now, you must have the will to do something about it. The choice really is yours. It just has to be the right choice.

The problem with seeking happiness for ourselves alone is that it is likely to give rise to a certain degree of selfishness. Then our thoughts become focused on ourselves. We try to create a bubble around us that keeps unhappiness factors away and, perhaps unwittingly, we become very insular. This may work for a short time but eventually a deep sense of dissatisfaction will start nagging at us from inside.

If we want to be truly happy and content, we have to be less concerned with “me”. In fact, the more we are concerned with others’ welfare and their happiness, the happier we will become. In other words, we do the opposite of what the ego is pushing us to do or avoid doing. It’s a universal law and it works. When we take the focus away from ourselves, we take the focus off the things in life which we blame for … well, blame for anything, really.

If you have any doubts as to whether it is right or responsible to be happier, let’s start with the thought that a happier human being is a better human being. Remember that moods are infectious and happy people tend to uplift others. Some people have the gift of being able to see the energy fields around people and they will tell you that a generous, outward looking person has vibrant, outgoing energy. But you don’t have to see that to know it. You can sense it. You know what it is like to be in the company of a warm-hearted person.

Vibrate happiness!

A friend sent us a quote from the late great Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: “I see only one ‘do’ in life and that is: vibrate happiness. Increase the happiness within yourself and within your surroundings because the sole purpose of creation is the increase of happiness…”

Whether it is a throwback from more austere times that has conditioned them I don’t know but many people seem to have a distinct reservation about being happy. It is almost as though they think that happiness is wrong and that they are not meeting their responsibility as human beings unless they feel and look glum. Many children, unfortunately, are brought up in families which are not happy and innocent joyfulness is very quickly lost.

We have a responsibility to ourselves and others to be happy. Inside, we have a “happiness switch”. We just have to find it and choose to use it. Sometimes it is simply a question of choosing to throw that switch, even when everything around us seems to be falling apart. There is work to do, of course, but for now we just have to decide which direction we want to go in – towards happiness or away from it.

Adapted from The Great Little Book of Happiness

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