How to be happy?

How To be happy?

We tend to overanalyse and make things into serious science and that has happened with happiness too. These days it is a concept that is studied and there are teachers preaching about how to be happier with a mile long list of things of what you need to do to be happier. You need to exercise more, eat your veggies, meditate, learn the frequency of happiness and embody the happy you, understand manifesting, learn the teachings of old masters, go to a retreat, become a monk and so on… And all this is just underlining that you are not happy, which actually makes you feel worse, because after you have been chasing happiness for years, you now not only feel unhappy, but also a failure and you have learned to guilt yourself for not being able to find happiness. The problem is that the science of happiness is making us chase happiness instead of focusing on being happy.

Happiness is a feeling. Just like sadness. It is a function of the body and can be turned on when ever. You know when you watch a sad movie and get sad? It is the same mechanism, you watch a happy movie and get happy. Sometimes it is hard, I give you that. And sometimes you are not supposed to be happy (but you can) but something else, like wanting to survive in a fire, sad in a funeral, angry around stupid people… you get the point. But in everyday life, if you want to turn on your happiness more often, then focus on things that do just that. It so simple it is stupid! I heard in a podcast that a new study says (they actually made a study of this!) that happy people prioritize happy things in their lives. Well, go figure, who knew!

Some teachers are trying to teach how to find happiness within you. Which i think is just teaching how to be good at searching. It is there, like hundred other feelings too. It is a mechanism, a chemical reaction that occurs in your body when something happy happens. Thoughts can be happy too and they make the same reaction. Like good memories or thinking of someone or -thing you love. Also the skill to see what is good even in a bad situation is useful when you want to turn on your happiness more often. But that road can become toxic too if you start to paint shit pretty. Shit is shit and toxic positivity is real. But you can turn your shit into fertilizer after you have dealt with it. Good things can grow from it.

I am a recovering overthinker and my homework is to simplify things. So word of the day (and art too):

Be like magpie. Go find shiny things (happy moments) and build a nest (life) from them.