Ayisha Qureshi

I am so sick of everyone trying to find happiness!!! If I do admit, though, I was doing it myself a few years ago. I remember picking up every book with the word “happiness” in it. The quest was arduous, long, hard and consistent. So what changed…?

Well, for one thing I did. As I searched in vain for the sometimes euphoric and other time serene “feeling” of happiness, I realized, albeit a little disappointingly, that it was a means to an end and not a destination itself. I think it was the getting older, growing up and my constant contemplation and heroic reading habits that lead me to this conclusion.

Here are 10 things that I learned about happiness after frantically searching for it for years, reading innumerable books, articles and having numerous conversations with whoever will tolerate me:

1. Happiness is merely the absence of sadness. Don’t try to find it because it doesn’t exist!
2. It is there every moment that you are (consciously) free of thought and in the present.
3. Euphoria is not happiness.
4. Every time you want it, take a deep breath, and focus your mind completely on your breath. As you count the breath in and out, the mind rests and is empty. This is the closest that you will come to knowing happiness.
5. It doesn’t lie in the past or the future. Get out of there and stay in the moment.
6. Stop over analysing- things don’t always happen for a reason. There is a method to the madness but this method may not become visible to us, the mere humans that we are.
7. Lower your expectations- stop expecting even from your own self. It’s useless and is similar to looking at everything (yourself included) through 3D glasses: everything you see appears distorted!
8. Get rid of any other filter that you may be using, like status, money, education, colour, appearance and so on.
9. Take care of your health- being healthy and free of disease is another way of knowing happiness.
10. Don’t resist: change, people, life, Etc. They will happen irrespective of whether you approve or not. If it bothers you that much, remove yourself from the situation and if you can’t, then accept it, stay in it and do it gracefully, without whining.