Tag Archives: #Nature

Change is inevitable and happens all the time. A calm mind reclaims happiness when it’s intentional in all it does. Accept what you can’t change and be at ease within yourself. Here’s how;

Don’t let yourself be robbed of happiness when you’re sad and down in the dumps!

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Life is chaotic and sometimes awful things happen out of blue. And when that occurs, it feels like we’ve been thrown for a loop. Pushing to edge, it infects all our waking hours with endless worries and mellows our happiness.

Image source: ‘7 Steps to Embracing Mind-Body Wholeness in the New Year’ by Deepak Chopra in chopra.com on Dec.19,2018.

Yet, instinctively we keep driving through, often surviving on adrenaline. We over schedule ourselves; we drink umpteen cups of coffee; we respond to one more e-mail; we stay amped all day believing that we’ll eventually be able to set things straight and done. And in the way, we let ourselves burn recklessly.

It’s rude and shocking…for all that burning doesn’t do any good. Except that it overwhelms us and drowns all our happiness amidst the entire struggle. Misplaced trust, broken promises, blatant lies; just about everything stokes our sufferings.

Looking forward!

In this frantic world, happiness is like a friend you rarely have the chance to catch up with. But finding a moment of reassurance is never impossible. You may presume that you can find happiness when you’re finally completely free of troubles; but that’s not how it works.

In fact it runs the other way around and isn’t as challenging as it seems.

Terrible things do happen to each one us at some point in life. When you are caught in the thick of things-whether it’s about a snappy senior or a brassy relative who don’t believe in boundaries or yet another viral video of a violent racist incident– you’re left stranded with mounting fears and have no clue how to handle it.  Worse, rather than hoping for a better end, you come up with a snappy retort and a quick fix to quell your unease.

But would an irrational assumption and aggression be of any good? Like climate change wouldn’t that mean hurtling down a worm hole of offensive ends and no-win arguments?

So, if you feel you have no space for peace left with you, are terribly hurt or perhaps angry and looking for a smarter way-a calmer way to bring to you greater attention and ingenuity without shedding one bit of happiness…these three simple ways might just let you find your Zen in a world that seems anything but peaceful.

Image source: ‘Seven ways to rest’ by Sherryl Garratt in the creativelife.net on Dec.06, 2021.

Forgiveness is good

Feeling hurt, even angry is a forgivable response when you are wronged or treated unfairly. But holding on to slights doesn’t help in reclaiming happiness. They take up so much of your emotional energy and push your emotional wellness to the wall.

Forgiveness on the other hand, isn’t something that helps the person alone you forgive. It does even more for you in the end. Of course, it’s a long demanding emotion and goes beyond a simple, “I forgive you”. Worse, sans compassion, it misses acceptance and would leave you mired in self blame and regret.

Regretting and trying to clean up the wrong on the other hand, is one good amend to begin with. Over the time, real good changes will happen to your behavior and I’m sure you won’t have to lie to your worrisome waking hours any more.

Find time for yourself

I find loneliness a mere normal state of mind that builds around relationships but desperately yens for sociability when abandoned.

While spending just the right amount of time with yourself is good for your emotional well being, excess of solitude can badly hurt your happiness over the time. Let it turn intense and it will become all consuming and wreck your everyday life. Your creative side will erode; you won’t be able to re-evaluate your boundaries and above all you wouldn’t be able to connect with your needs.

When something terrible happens and stress overwhelms, we speculate about what wrong we’ve done to cause bad luck. “I must have been wrong in standing up to myself. I created this mess for someone else and now it has double backed to me.” It’s natural for you to think and regress then.

Correct this distortion if that’s what is hurting you. Don’t wait to use your supports. They might help you see the problem differently, but deserting your nemesis and rebooting your mind to do away with ill thoughts is your personal need.

Catch them young and you could reclaim your happiness even while busy in your daily grind.

Get back to nature

Don’t we all head back to the trees (or the seas) when stress goes for a spin and begin to take its toll? Doesn’t the feel of the breeze, the smell of the grass, the sound of water running, feel at home in the outdoors?

Setting better boundaries starts here!…

Getting back to nature is one step to ease your emotional distress. It’s amazing how you could find great friends in elements around you whenever disquiet turns exhausting. As extravagant or as simple as you want it to be, there is no need for a footslog far away to some mountain top. Start with few smaller hauls and as you get closer and closer to nature, you’ll find you’re rid of your excessive worries and your innate self is back in gear. You’re no longer bedeviled! Trust me, your best bet to escape from 100 or 1000 worries lies right beyond your garden fence.

And don’t forget to leave your phone at home. A constant stream of notifications and e-mails or the urge to refresh your social media frequently can quickly chip away at your newly found zing!

Image source: pexels.com.

Most meltdowns, I think are rarely catastrophic. They are fixable and never meant to be a 24/7 experience. Yet being constantly surrounded by them feels more like being hunted in a savanna by some wild animal where your stress response is all spooked up to save your life. Your attention is mobilized and riveted, your muscles are strained for a quick sprint and your immune system is racy enough to get you quickly out of danger.

This edginess though is usually short lived. In fact you’re stressed in real sense only for five minutes….more like before you die! But even in those few anxious moments it burns into your body, slams your emotional well being and crashes your decision making. It is then that you get tightly wound up and are more likely to react harshly than to respond with reason.

No matter what you choose to purge your guilt or how you decide to go about it, repossessing happiness never happens overnight. It’s only your patience that would make all the difference between a beaten sod and a wishful Pollyanna.

Your takeaway!…

Next whenever you hit a bad trip and are clueless about how to cope with it, find a ray of hope in my playbook; without pre judging anything try your hand for once… something might just work right for you!

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Let the chase for happiness distract you from deeply ordinary things and grieve relationships that make life meaningful and yours could well be the story of a never ending quest for happiness.

Five reasons why your pursuit of happiness may be flawed and elusive!!

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Find out what bedevils your quest and learn how to get that twinkle-toed happiness back in your life.

We humans are complex life forms in a beautiful way. Put us in an intimate, passionate relationship and that seductive crush gets all hyped-up. We reckon awareness and acceptance as thumb prints and adore the quest for happiness, better still; most desirable. Perhaps spending more time with our kinds, getting a more fulfilling and secure job, or even improving our health is the reason we consider happiness a worthy pursuit. After all, being happy feels good. But do we build our lives on that reasoning alone?

Feature credits:’ Happiness with nature’ by Vigorswitch in youtube.com on Aug. 26, 2020.

Deep inside, we all treasure a fascinating tale of lifestyle and feelings, raring to be heard and appreciated. In fact, looking for an opportunity to engage and be recognized for that distinct wharf of ours, nourishes and strengthens us or at times weakens breaks or crushes us. Perhaps maximizing happiness is the only reason, we chase it. Still perceptions bump and make it so easy for us to get sad or depressed.

You think of yourself as a frightful and appalling person

We all have our insecurities. Nobody is perfect. You may wish for a better life; maybe much better of it. But it is not always perfect for you. Sufferings turn ugly once you mentally label them as a bad situation. The emotional trauma that follows cuts you off from the vigour of life. So, once you get mired neck deep in a miserly spot that sucks, your downhill spiral begins, howsoever much you shout to the World that you are perfect and the best.

This however, doesn’t mean that you throw your hands in the air and let that moment pass by when you could reach out and grab happiness. You can still be contented and happy. Just let go of that dreary thought of “If only I was richer… if only I was thinner” and so on. Accept yourself with utmost honesty the way you are and you will give others 10 reasons to envy you. Once the clouds of denial are gone, the magic of acceptance and contentment will unfold in your life. Just be the true rendition of self improvement and learn to love yourself.

You have sucked your soul out for long

I have a friend who never tires of talking and in most conversations he is the only one who seems to be interested in things he has to say. So, people tend to avoid his company and maybe he knows how uncomfortable sometimes it becomes. But I find him one happy person who has shaken himself awake and enthused his perspective from negative to positive outlook. Next day he could be found talking nineteen to the dozen in another gathering! I think he see the things in his life as a glass that is half full  rather than half empty, and never miss out on moments that tend to make him happy.

Happy or otherwise, we all have choice as to how we spend our live. It’s our perspective that does the picking. Nothing changes for us unless we decide to take pleasure from life and live every moment as a blessing. We all know that our moods are fleeting and their causes uncertain but we also appreciate that a life spent experiencing happiness, is in some ways a good life. The concern though, is not what happiness means to you, but instead why it eluded you and how to get it.

We tend to see happiness as inconsistent to sadness or depression, suggesting that being happy means few woes and fewer regrets. If we remain contented to see the things in our life as a glass that is half empty, rather than half full, we tend to miss out on the opportunities that may be present around us. Not accepting challenges and considering them as bad consequences would never let you grow out of your miseries.

 “Unhappy is he who depends on success to be happy,” Alex Dias Ribeiro.

As successful as you are or hope to be in your life and work, be sure that you will find happiness only in things that are deeply ordinary; enjoying a walk or a conversation with a loved one or plucking turnips and tomatoes from kitchen garden. For few who worship hard work or strive to outperform, this may sound like an admission of defeat. But accepting things as they happen and facing challenges head on makes you find meaning in them and move forward. So, get interested; it’s time you started living with gusto and made the most of today.

“Today is life– the only life you are sure of”.-Dale Carnegie.

You are yet to open up your mind and heart to life

Lately you have been torn up in your mind and heart. You have been questioning yourself quite uncomfortably. “Am I ill-mannered?”, “Do I always sound argumentative?”, “Do I talk too loud?”, “Does my breath smell?”, “Do I ever bore others when in company?”

Lending ears to comments and criticisms and not treating them with rejoinders like, “Don’t exaggerate! That’s just the way I am!” opens up our minds and hearts for good. It’s not how much we have in us but how much we appreciate for having it with us, rules our general state of happiness. After all life is made up of some great experiences and is a gift in our hands to nimble-toe through. Trust me; it makes the best out of inevitable for us. Each day shapes us and helps us to grow and change. So, get along, chose to be happy and live through every moment of life with grace and gratitude.

You are evasive to your ‘present’

The desire to be happy is instinctive to human nature, though it flirts and fleets. Naturally evasive, happiness is not a bad thing any more than a wine is. Both bring fun and sweetness to life when positive events like winning a lottery, promotions or even something as little as a gift from someone close to your heart, ring sweet bells in your heart or goose bumps all over.

Like it or not, being “present” for every moment shapes happiness for you. Your present is the moment where all reality is. The past is gone, the future is yet to arrive and the present is passing by. So, focus on living in and celebrating the present to the full. Live every moment of life as a blessing and you will have the greatest opportunity to experience happiness.

“When we are present and still and our minds are open, we will find that happiness is our natural state.”-Dr. Robert Puff.

The world doesn’t fall apart, every time you get hit!!

While many for us would be relieved and happy to have survived the pandemic in 2021, for others the global scourge may have caused stress meltdown and severe sufferings. The world for them would have felt like it’s upside down—literally.

We all know that anguish is an inevitable consequence of being alive. But if minimizing distress can bring happiness, it gets important to get hold of your emotional health. At least, if you can’t control it, you will always have the control over how to guard it!

Everyone experiences situations gone wrong one time or the other, but not everyone treats it in the same way. Of course, feeling stressed out sucks. It leaves you with two choices—let it suffocate you or bring the change and rewrite a new story. Remember life is a rollercoaster ride and stress will happen. So, master your sanity and good sense to ride through it. Feeling overwhelmed already? It’s time you did some soul searching and refashioned your perspective. Here are five ways to know if you do overreact to all that happens around you and wouldn’t allow yourself to manage a happy disposition.

Happiness has many faces

Our past uncannily keeps us tied down in turmoil and sadness; we are wired like that. Negativity rules over us and at times it hurts, even when you get moments of happiness in between. No denying; if you experience it, you are hanging on to the grudges and resentment of the past and could not get rid of them. Or maybe you have come up against different kinds of happiness, which do not always go together. Having too much of happiness of one sort could spoil your ability to have enough space for other. For instance, you could be butting heads how to balance career and family all together and in turn could be equally unhappy in both lives. This could be significantly damaging to yourself and those around you.

Empathy is one buzzword though, that could help. As Sadhguru puts it, “walk away from your past wiser, not wounded”. A dire need for approval in the past has left you vulnerable and your fragile self esteem is weighed down.  Your chances of experiencing happiness have vanished.  So, declutter your past conflicts. Stay motivated and enjoy the life to the fullest; no matter what happens-good or bad. Help yourself to grow and change and chose to be happy. Of course, you cannot forget or wipe out your gloomy past but those very crises best increase your chances of success in pursuit to happiness.

‘Happiness addict’ prefer being special over being successful

In short, keep moving with life and see it as a blessing than be damned. Enjoy it and have a whale of a time while you can. Unfortunate things happen sometimes, but so do some great things. Try not to react much to whatever is happening around you. Don’t grind yourself and be serious about how others sleep on it. You are just not being authentic or legit. Even to put on a show could ruin your chances to be happy. Live life like an adventure, Explore and plan it the way you want to. Sometimes you may even need to laugh at yourself.

Feature credits: ‘Relax with the beauty of nature’ by the Whole Happy Life in youtube.com on Mar.21,2020.

So smile as much as you can, laugh often, hang out with mates and above all just try not to be fussy or play ducks and drakes. Make the best of what you have and keep growing.

“Don’t take life too seriously. You’ll never get out of it alive”-Elbert Hubbard