Are you happy now?

Lately I have been observing that people are not happy in general. A recent example is my friend who at times inspires me a lot. Quite honestly, I wasn’t really expecting him to go through these phases of unhappiness, or depression, if you will. But then again, the ironies of life can do crazy things to people.

I am no expert in human psychology; neither do I know what really drives happiness. However, I find my life as a constant learning experience and one of the important lessons I learnt is how to stay happy and keep the depression away. Yes, I was pretty depressed and unhappy for a long time at one point in my life, but I never lost hope and ultimately fought my way out. Since then I have been pretty content with my life and have managed to stay away from blues.

It’s impossible to cover everything I have learnt in one post, and I might do a series of posts on this, but here I am listing some of the basic principles that work for me, and may or may not work for you, but do give it a thought, or try it out if you want, and let me know how it works.

So, rule number one, there is no spoon.

Ok, let’s get serious.

1. Keep your sense of humor intact. If you can master this skill and learn to laugh under any circumstances, I can guarantee you will never be unhappy. Try to find the funnier aspect of things. There is always a humorous side to any situation. Start looking at it from that angle. Learn to laugh at yourself and your mistakes, instead of being upset. Make your friends laugh, make your family laugh. Just don’t miss a chance to laugh out loud. The world is too funny to be depressed about it.

2. Be proactive, as opposed to reactive. This deserves a separate post, but in short, think in advance about how things can go bad in your life and how would you deal with it. And then if and when something actually goes wrong, you wouldn’t be surprised as you had already thought about it. So, think how would you deal with it if your current project fails, and don’t forget to be funny.

3. Don’t plan to perfection. People often complain they are unhappy because things don’t happen as they plan. And that’s the biggest mistake they make. Sure, planning is important, but don’t do it to the gory details. Leave some decisions to be made on the spot. Look at it like this. Suppose you are traveling from one city to another. You know the directions to get there and that’s all you care about. You don’t really worry about how fast you will make each turn and how many times you will change lanes. The most you can do is make sure your vehicle is in good shape. Just be prepared for the worst, such as a flat tire, and carry a spare wheel being proactive. As long as you get to your destination you are happy. That’s how life is. It’s all about getting from point A to point B. If you think a lot about the minor details then let me tell you, it never happens exactly as you plan it, because, let’s face it, we cannot look into the future, so we don’t know how things will actually turn out and there is bound to be something you didn’t think about in advance, and that’s where people start complaining that they never thought it would happen like that and end up being depressed. So, don’t think about it. Just have a rough sketch of how you are going to do something and then start doing it, and deal with things as they come. Trust me, you will feel truly happy when you will be done.

4. Stop worrying about materialistic things. I wanted to make a post on this for a long time but me and my lazy ass. In a nutshell, people are more important than things. If you want to buy something but are afraid that it might make someone close to you upset, then don’t buy it. Postpone it until you change their mind. Because if you get something by hurting somebody’s feelings, you will never ever enjoy using it, unless your heart is made of stone. More on this later. Until then just remember this, people are more important than things.

This is getting too long. I will write more on this at a later time. Stay tuned.