Secrets to Happiness Part I

What is happiness? Happiness is a feeling of joy inside. It is logically what everybody wants to feel and experience. Everybody is seeking happiness in an unconscious level because that just how humans are wired to be. To seek happiness and avoid pain. But how hard can it really be to really be happy? Do we have to have all the things that we want in order for us to be really happy? Or is it possible to experience joy or blissful happiness right now, at this moment?

The most common respond that we get from ourselves is, yes, money will make us happy. Yes, a good relationship will make us happy. Yes, credential and fame will make us happy, having a perfect body shape will make us happy and the list goes on. Although, there is absolutely nothing wrong with having all these earthly things, they can only take our happiness in a certain degree. Yes, that’s right. There is limitation to that. And that limitation is always set by each of us.

Happiness from Earthly Things

Should we really put our hopes of being happy on the earthly things in life? After all, they make us feel good when we experience them. Don’t they? Of coarse, because they are there for humans to enjoy. It is designed for us by the Creator or the very Source of existence. So it is a good thing. But there is one thing that I think all of us should remember. We should not consider these things to be the main source of happiness.

Yes, it does sounds like the right things to say, but why? Well, here is one of the reasons why. It is because they Don’t Remain Ours Forever – Let’s face the truth here, even though for many of us, it is very hard to accept. We cannot keep these earthly things or material possession of ours. The material wealth, our health, our friends, our love ones, everything is to going to transform or in a massive level. Everything that ages experience physical level of transformation.

The truth is all of us has a beginning and an end. Therefore, if we consider the earthly possessions as the main sources of our happiness, we will definitely be disappointed. We will be broken-hearted. Because as time passes away, we will get old, we will get weaker and sick and eventually, it will lead to our deathbed.

Ok, thats scary. But let us start focusing on what we can do to enjoy our lives, while we are still alive.
What’s the wise to Consider as Our Main Source of Happiness?

You might ask, “So now, instead of considering earthly things as the main source of our true happiness, what should we consider as our main source of happiness, instead?” Good question. The key here is to do the “opposite”.

Now, what do I mean by that? What I mean is, instead of focusing and deeply pursuing all these material things in this world, which are visible in our eyes, we should focus on the things that we cannot see, that are invisible. And no one is making this up. This appeared in the Bible before anyone of us here was even born. But I’m not preaching here either, I just want to share what I’ve learned recently and I only aim to also accept it myself and to help others do the same.

So lets get back to it. When we are young what we do is we try to experiment and do things, crazy things in life. And that’s just experimental on our part. As young people, we have this deep curiosity and desire to explore the unknown. If you’re like me, in our mind, we are simply but trying to explore and to familiar ourselves to various types of life experiences.

For others, they might think that, having fun and doing all the things that pleases their hearts is the way of life. At some point of our lives, depending on who raised us and who we associate ourselves with, we might think that having fun in life is the cure for painful experiences, and the more we do it, the more it becomes a way of living.

But follow me on this, if you are over 40 years old and have done all sorts of stuff that any young folks can ever imagine, then you also probably realize that all these are none sense. They’ve taken you nowhere near eternal bliss. Because all the effort that’s been put in pursuit of happiness in material things produced temporary experience of happiness and worse, they might be accompanied with tremendous pain of loss.

Focusing on the Unseen or spiritual type of happiness

Here is an example, let say you’ve been rich almost all your life. And you consider this as your main source of happiness because you get to do whatever you want. But one day, something unpleasant just happen. You lost your possessions and everything.

The question now is, will you still feel happy? For many people, absolutely not. It would be extremely difficult. And the reason for this is that, you have put all of your confidence in your wealth. And when your wealth goes away, your confidence, your happiness and your peace of mind are washed away with it.

On the other hand, if we focus our mind on the unseen things, or the invisible things that make us feel happy, we will get different results. If you’re like me who lived in a not so rich country and family, you will see things differently. When I was younger, in the Philippines, just like the others I had the privilege to live a humble life. We were very poor and we did not have access to many things.

When I joined Church of Christ, they taught us how to become more spiritual in our way of living, to set our hearts, hopes and intentions to serving God. I was thought to become spiritual, to rely on God more than myself, to put hope and confidence in God.

This way, when something happens, when we lose something dear to us, we will still have confidence. This is because the basis of our joy, peace, confidence and happiness is not in our possessions, but in God and a more meaningful pursuit. We were thought to not worry about things, but always pray that things may go well with us.

So my question for you today is… where are you putting all of your attention on? Where are you seeking happiness from? Is it in the material things in this world or is it in the invisible or the spiritual world? This doesn’t mean that you should throw away or disregard all your material possessions, no, because they are there for us experience. The message here is not not put all your eggs in that one basket. See yeah next time. :)