Hello, the Tailor of my Happiness

Was going through another talk by Ajahn Brahm, this time it is on dealing with criticism. But I shall leave the main topic to some other time. What I want to write about today is happiness.

We all want happiness, if there is someone who does not want it, it is not because he does not want, but because he feels that he does not deserve it. If there is such a person, you might actually want to stay away from him unless you are able to handle his negativism.

Now since all of us want happiness, how do we go about getting it? Very simple, ask the Tailor that makes your Happiness and the person is..... YOU! Only you will know what kind of happiness that you truly, genuinely want. Well on hearing this you may say, but "How can I be the one that creates my happiness when my surrounding is full of 'sharks' and 'idiots'? These people always caused me to be angry or fustrated or sad." Well from these questions, I have two points I need to make here.

Firstly, you have ceded the source of happiness to other people. You let other people control when you are happy. These people are just the stimulus but it does not mean that given such a stimulus, you must react with the same response every time. We all have seen that given the same stimulus, different people have different response to it. So why should it be any different when someone has done something to make you angry? You can still be happy by maybe seeing the lighter side of things, thinking positively to the stimulus. Don't let other people stop you from being happy. Being happy does not need a reason anyway. Just break into a smile as and when you feel like it. And you would realize that when you smile, your body feel better and you can think better as well.

Most of the time, we have certain expectations on other people and when these people does not meet it, you become unhappy. But should that be the case? If you look at it carefully, you are the one that makes the expectations, so sometimes, adjusting the expectation on someone might actually make yourself happier as well.

Another situation is this, let's say you are thinking of getting one of the two dresses that you like. You have a slight preference for a blue one with a nice lace that runs very beautifully. But when you ask the opinions of many your best friends, most of them actually said that the yellow dress is nicer, because they like the buttons on it, the cutting and patterns on the yellow dress. Because so many people said that it is nice, you decide to get the yellow dress instead of the blue which you preferred. And in the end, when you wore the yellow dress, you actually regretted buying it. Ever come across such situations before? Why does this happen? I can tell you why. Because your friends does not know what makes you happy, the only person that knows best what are the things that makes you happy is YOU!

Now I am not saying that you should not ask for the opinions of your friends on decisions, you can ask and seek their opinions but at the end of the day, you need to assess and decide which decisions will be good for you because you are the only person who knows yourself best. Don't be completely influenced by the opinions of your friends.

As you can see from the three situations below, we tailor our own happiness. We are responsible for our own happiness. Just learn to respond positively to stimulus, manage expectations and make your own decision. Only when we observe these three guidelines, we can truly create happiness that we want. Now, go out there and make your own happiness. Go!

Cheers!