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| HappiCraft.com Harnessing Mind Power for Happy Living |
Happiness and Unhappiness
Happiness is a condition of the mind. When we get into that condition, we make a simple
assumption: everything that affects our lives is under our own control. We can even
identify and decide for ourselves what makes us unhappy. At that stage we might even
decide not to be bothered with certain kinds of problems and ignore any problem which
we think do not warrant ‘worrying’.
Definitions of happiness go back to for more than 2500 years, when Lord Gautama Buddha said
that ‘Happiness is wealth supreme’.
Since then, there has been a large number of definitions. Some of them are useful,
from a practical point of view. Others have no relevance to those who are trying
to find out how they could enter into the higher echelons of happiness.
There are three kinds of happiness
Happiness for body
People enjoy luxuries, even when they are undergoing a period of imprisonment. However
harassed your mind is, you like to make your life more comfortable by the acquisition of happy
assets, which include land and buildings, vehicles, good food and clothing; it also includes
family and other relationships to ensure intimate, physical and psychological needs of the man.
The objective here is to create happy thoughts through the gratification of the sensual organs:
eyes, ears, tongue, nose and the body. Mind plays a coordinating function.
You make your home and working environments beautiful to satisfy your eyes. You listen to good
music to please your ears. The body touch is an important sensation that people crave for
therefore you buy comfortable furniture and clothing. Everybody thinks that such things could
make you happy. The happiness created for the body through the gratification of the senses is
always short lived; and is associated with inbuilt conditions that take the happiness off from you.
They all are subject to the laws of non-permanance.
All the happy thoughts developed by gratifying the body organs have to be renewed. When you eat
good food to be happy, you got to repeat it after a few more hours. If not, you will be really
unhappy. So are all the other sense organs. That is because a happy thought, like any other
thought, has its own life cycle: birth, existence and death.
A happy thoughts comes and dies. It is only thereafter that a new thought can enter your system
because only one thought can survive in you mind at any one single moment.
Safeguarding the happy assets you have acquired is also another factor that makes you
unhappy. It is because of the problems associated with the protection of your ownership rights. If
you lose some of your happy assets--say your marriage partner--it might completely destroy the
happy world that you were building up or enjoying. A happy castle built upon physical happy
assets could crumble without giving any notice.
Happiness of the Mind
For the mind to be happy, it should be free from any pains and embarrassments due to physical
causes such as sickness, hunger, thirst and other basic needs of life. Some of the other
important factors include fear, envy, anger and hatred. Even if you are enjoying a high level of
physical comforts, you would not be happy, if you are being bombarded with emotions and
pains. They disturb the serenity of the mind.
People still believe that thinking about the happy moments in ones own life is one of the
happiest things that one can do. That is an effective way of getting out of ones own miseries
temporarily. Contemplating over the happy memories in the past or even building up of a dream
world for the future can be a useful method of entering into the world of happiness. But it cannot
be sustained for long.
A person cannot be happy unless his mind agrees that the meswsages he receives through his
body organs.. Or, in other words, the mind can interpret everything and decides whether the activity
causes happiness or unhappiness.
Happiness is a condition of the mind. The other sensual organs can work in collaboration with
the mind to make a person happy.
Tranquility of a stable mind
Tranquility of a stable mind that is not affected by either happy or unhappy thoughts is very
difficult to sustain. This kind of happiness differs from the other kinds of happiness because it
does not involve the other sensory organs, or the happiness is stimulated by the
activites of the other organs such as the eye and ear etc.
A person can seek happiness without either thinking about his past experiences, or into the
future which becomes something similar to the world of dreams. It has been argued that a
person can be very happy if he can forget his past, ignore his future and concentrate only on the
present. This he can do only by meditating about this moment. Say looking at the performance of
his own body or engage in the breathing "in and out" meditation technique known as ana pana sati
in the Pali language. This technique is more than 2500 years old and has been practiced very
effectively and popularly, even by Lord Buddha.
In the long run this type of happiness is possible only if one has relinquished all his desires
and his cravings. It will also be necessary to relinquish all the happy assets he has collected
during his life time and all the relationships he has made with his family and friends. If not,
minor embarrassments could disturb your levels of happiness incessantly. It is difficult to build
firewalls to prevent emotions from disturbing your levels of happiness and tranquility at such
levels. Those noble individuals who are not affected by greed, ignorance or fear, known as
arahants in Buddhism could enjoy such happiness in the long run.
But in the short run, any person can enjoy happiness, if he develops his mind power to such a level
that he gets into a trance for short periods.
Those individuals who leave all their worldly belonging and move away from their family
environments
continue meditating in secluded places because they think they are happy or are striving for
eternal happiness.
A definition of happiness
Happiness can be defined as:” Happiness is the dividend that accrues to you, for your
investments, to make others happy. These investments could be made either in words, deeds
or even in thoughts."
This definition differs from most others due to its focus on the happiness of others, more than of
being self-centered, more than being an aggressive collector of an elusive commodity called
happiness.
It is very easy to understand this concept, if we look at the simplest situation that one
experiences in every house hold.
Mother and child
How happy is a mother when she is barest-feeding her baby, with her own blood, converted to
milk? When doing that, she has no other concerns other than making her own baby happy.
Every time she reflects on those moments she might enter in to a different world of happiness. She,
sometimes suffers, physically, to enjoy this activity with her own child.
Can her own baby-sitter enter into the same world of happiness while feeding the same baby, with
the milk she has purchased from the market? The servant, except in very exceptional
circumstances, feeds the baby as a part of her job. In this case she is looking after her own
interests, salary and other benefits, and not to make the baby happy.
Now let us look at happiness from a different perspective: the real experience of a senior citizen.
The wisdom of old age
"At this ripe age of 65, I have realized one basic truth about life: I am growing old, day by day, and
year by year. Therefore, my aspirations, competences, dreams, my health and every thing that I,
so far called mine, have changed; and are changing. It will continue to change until my death
which is the only thing definite about my life now.
This change creates a basic fear, an inadequacy, and incompleteness in my life. It should also
be the same with you if you are of my age!
I am striving to be complete. This struggle of mine to be complete is common to all human
beings. It is this craving to be complete, it is this uncertainty about relationships, the ego, fear of
sickness, and fear of suffering and death that make me look for opportunities to be happy.
In other words, happiness to me is a temporary heaven, until the next catastrophe occurs. Hoping
that I would be free of temporary or permanent problems, I trudge along, to the best of my ability to
keep myself happy.
I am absolutely sure, that, it would be very difficult to achieve that completeness I am dreaming
of; and no body would be 100% successful in achieving it. Yet we keep on trying to be complete.
That is the human nature. As far as I am concerned, I believe that nothing is impossible, and
therefore my struggle for happiness continues, in spite of my partial failures and incomplete
successes.
That non-ending struggle to achieve an undefined goal, makes us go in search of things which
we are not sure of, or not definite. These values, sometimes, we can reach; sometimes, we
miss; sometimes, we have to postpone; sometimes, we are frustrated. The end result decides
whether we are happy or unhappy."
I am convinced that happiness is the other side of Suffering. Suffering is a part of life and
no body can avoid or help you to avoid suffering due to birth, ageing, sickness and death. So to
mitigate our suffering we go in search of happiness.
A caser study:Sompal de Unhappi
:Sompal de Unhappi moves into a higher echelon of happiness
Happiness is created by the generation of happy thoughts; and thoughts are generated by the
mind with or without the association of the other five senses: the eye, the ear, the nose, the
mouth and the body. We do everything to gratify our desires and cravings which are demanded by
these sensory organs
Happy thoughts are the results of our association with happy assets. Sompal after his big
promotion in his office, decided to invest his new cash flows in the acquisition of new happy assets,
so that he could move into a new level of happiness.
Sompal likes to look at and live with beautiful flowers. So he bought a few roses to be kept in his
apartment. When you see the flowers like beautiful roses, you expect the rose to create a
happy thought in your mind, because you like flowers. [gratification of the eye.]
As he enjoys listening to good music he invested in a set of new equipment to listen to good
music[ to gratify his ears]
Sompal also bought some ice cream and kept it in his refrigerator because he ice-
cream is his favorite dessert..[pleasing his tongue]
He bought some exotic perfumes for his girl friend, because she likes to use perfumes and
she will be happy using it. [gratifying the nose].
Sompal also purchased an air conditioner because he likes and enjoys living in a cooler
environment [gratification of the body].
All these assets he acquired as a preliminary step in getting married.
Can these happy assets guarantee his happiness? For how long?
The happiness created by the ownership or the use of the above assets was short lived, because
happy thoughts created by those objects could not be sustained for long periods of time.
Whatever the asset is, it is subject to the laws of non-permanence. Some deteriorate faster, and
some very slowly. When they disappear, your happy thoughts will also be transformed into
unhappy thoughts. That could make you unhappy.
Everything Changed.
Unfortunately, for Sompal, the source of electricity supply to his apartment area was
destroyed by a tsunami wave. As a result, the air-conditioner ceased to function and his
apartment was without electricity; the ice-cream started melting in the refrigerator. He had no
information about his girl friend, because of the disturbance to the communication system. It
becomes a major worry. He was even without music.
This is a very realistic situation in the current environment. While thinking about his happiness
or the unhappiness, he decided to rectify the situation temporarily, by hiring out a small home
generator with which he could even operate the air conditioner. He could not give life to the
rose, because it had already withered; but the other assets, he thought would continue to
generate the feelings and happy thoughts for Sompal.
Happiness and Unhappiness.
Happiness and unhappiness are neighbors. They are separated by a thin margin called the
White Margin--the Zone of Indifference [ZOI] HappiLogo The ZOI is a realistic situation where a
person is
neither happy nor unhappy. This situation exists because we do not have time to think of our
own happiness or unhappiness; we do not understand the end result, because we are caught in
the commercial storms that keep on blowing all the time.
Most of the time, we live and work within this Zone of Indifference [white area] where we are
either too busy to be thinking of our happiness or unconcerned about ourselves. That is when
we are engrossed or engaged in different thoughts, stronger thoughts, or just tired.
Sometimes, our minds are tired or too lazy to be thinking of anything. At such times, our minds
are attracted to an object or to an event or a thought that is either too attractive for our mind or
unattractive for our eyes, ears, nose, tongue or our body. That means we have actually forgotten,
at least temporarily, that we are either happy or unhappy.
However unhappy you are, that unhappiness can temporarily be forgotten or suspended, or even
disappear completely, if a person dear to your heart joins you for a meal which you enjoy. Under
such circumstances, your unhappiness might be covered with a thin cloud of temporary
happiness which you achieve through the association of your friend. Even if you do not enjoy that
meal, the
association with your friend, can make you forget your unhappiness and even be happy for a
short period. That means you might get into and out of your gray area, into the red, and into the
white again. This movement up and down the happy grid is a normal happening.
The other side is also the same. The happy moments of your life, say, after you have either won
a coveted trophy or a competition after long years of preparation, can be marred by an event, or
even a thought that might push you into the gray area or into the fields of unhappiness.
In a situation like that, what decides whether you are unhappy or happy is the importance you
attach to that event, the feeling or the thought.
The only person that can make you happy is YOU and only you. Others could contribute to make
you feel miserable, or happy. But the ultimate control is in your own head. Others can only build
an environment and you create your own world of happiness or unhappiness within that
environment.
That is the reason why happiness remains an elusive commodity to those of us who are living in
a world where the environment has taken the upper hand. We are forced to move forward and
backward in our own living environment. So, the ultimate result is that your happiness levels
change with the environment. This can be changed. But it is difficult; not impossible.
A normal day.
This explains the logic why some individuals prefer to move into forest hermitages, so that they are
not being disturbed by changes in their environments.
Let’s look at the start of a normal day.
You have slept well, sans bad dreams. You get up from bed with a quiet and a comfortable
mind. You may be positioning yourself in any of the three ellipses shown in the diagram,
depending on the environment at your home.
With the commencement of a normal day, your mind is pure, not tainted by any influence in the
environment. Exceptions are there; but rare.
Then the media opens up with all sorts of news, both good and bad. This could be from your
family or from outside. Then, the moods begin to change. If there is an item of news that makes
you unhappy, you might move into the gray ellipse and commence the day from a grey area.
However, depending on the changes in the environment in which you live in, the nature of
thoughts that enters into your head changes. This is the main cause that changes the levels of
our happiness or unhappiness.
Happiness & Unhappiness
In the diagram, the grey area denotes unhappiness. The red is happiness. The area, in between
the red and grey shows the area where you are neither happy nor unhappy.
Even though the thoughts are generated from inside your head without any influence from the
environment, they could make you change. May be, that the thoughts could be triggered by
reminiscences of your past experiences or even by future plans.
Sometimes, you might end the major part of the day in the red ellipse, if the news you hear, read
or see are to your advantage, and helps you reach any of your goals. Then you might classify the
day as a good one, or a happy one. It might be a happy one because you might have the hope
that the changes might help you, in achieving or in completion of your goals, at least partially.
This is subjective to the fact that there are no other forces to disturb your tranquility.
Sometimes, you might call it an unhappy day, if the thoughts that come to your head are of a
disturbing nature.
Under an umbrella
It is a sunny day. The sun is shinning and the feelings of sunshine and warmth make the hearts
happy, even though there may be a few dark clouds passing over your head casting light
shadows.
Happiness is similar. There may be a few darker moments in a perfectly happy day. Yet you may
call it a happy day, because you are aware that a perfect day is impossible in an environment
such as ours.
Accordingly, on any normal day you move from the grey ellipse to the red one and back again.
It is a highly dynamic environment; and never static. The objective is to stay within the red ellipse
as long as possible.
The scenario described above is for a day--a very short period of our life. What happened in the
previous day and during the previous year will continue to affect our thoughts. The short period
we described above is a minute part of the long life history.
If you were under the influence of a series of embarrassing thoughts during the immediate past,
or say, yesterday, those thoughts would haunt you until you manage to get rid of the thoughts or
the problem to your satisfaction.
Problems or worries, once again are the fabrications of your own thoughts.
The thoughts could also be happy thoughts about happy moments of your life or things that you
have done to make others happy. What ever the nature of thoughts are, they could take
precedence over unhappy thoughts, depending on the importance that you attach to each
individual thought.
What is your experience?
What do you think of your own life during the last one month? You would have noticed that you
have been happy on some days, at certain times, and have been very unhappy during some
other times. There have been times when you were neither happy nor unhappy.
What are the things that make you unhappy?
What are the things that make you happy?
The list below, gives some of the activities that could make most of us unhappy.
We are unhappy when:
What are the things that make you happy or unhappy? Can we make a list like the one above?
Then you would really see for yourselves whether they are real or imaginary? Do you have to get
angry at a person who stares at you or laughs at the way how you walk? Can we ignore such
things and remain in the white area?
It is you and only you can decide on such things.
The environment in the Happyraj is designed to reduce the fluctuations in the levels of
happiness enjoyed by the guests. It is exactly the opposite in the case of HappiCraft.
Happiness Action Plan and formula for happiness
A case study on Happiness
Are you suffering
Happiness and Unhappiness
Enemies of Happiness
Revised on: 2008 August 10. Copyright: HappiCraft.com Contact address: nihal@happicraft.com
Happiness is a condition of the mind. When we get into that condition, we make a simple
assumption: everything that affects our lives is under our own control. We can even
identify and decide for ourselves what makes us unhappy. At that stage we might even
decide not to be bothered with certain kinds of problems and ignore any problem which
we think do not warrant ‘worrying’.
Definitions of happiness go back to for more than 2500 years, when Lord Gautama Buddha said
that ‘Happiness is wealth supreme’.
Since then, there has been a large number of definitions. Some of them are useful,
from a practical point of view. Others have no relevance to those who are trying
to find out how they could enter into the higher echelons of happiness.
There are three kinds of happiness
- • Happiness for the body
• Happiness of the mind.
• Tranquility of a stable mind that is not affected by either happy or unhappy thoughts.
.
Happiness for body
People enjoy luxuries, even when they are undergoing a period of imprisonment. However
harassed your mind is, you like to make your life more comfortable by the acquisition of happy
assets, which include land and buildings, vehicles, good food and clothing; it also includes
family and other relationships to ensure intimate, physical and psychological needs of the man.
The objective here is to create happy thoughts through the gratification of the sensual organs:
eyes, ears, tongue, nose and the body. Mind plays a coordinating function.
You make your home and working environments beautiful to satisfy your eyes. You listen to good
music to please your ears. The body touch is an important sensation that people crave for
therefore you buy comfortable furniture and clothing. Everybody thinks that such things could
make you happy. The happiness created for the body through the gratification of the senses is
always short lived; and is associated with inbuilt conditions that take the happiness off from you.
They all are subject to the laws of non-permanance.
All the happy thoughts developed by gratifying the body organs have to be renewed. When you eat
good food to be happy, you got to repeat it after a few more hours. If not, you will be really
unhappy. So are all the other sense organs. That is because a happy thought, like any other
thought, has its own life cycle: birth, existence and death.
A happy thoughts comes and dies. It is only thereafter that a new thought can enter your system
because only one thought can survive in you mind at any one single moment.
Safeguarding the happy assets you have acquired is also another factor that makes you
unhappy. It is because of the problems associated with the protection of your ownership rights. If
you lose some of your happy assets--say your marriage partner--it might completely destroy the
happy world that you were building up or enjoying. A happy castle built upon physical happy
assets could crumble without giving any notice.
Happiness of the Mind
For the mind to be happy, it should be free from any pains and embarrassments due to physical
causes such as sickness, hunger, thirst and other basic needs of life. Some of the other
important factors include fear, envy, anger and hatred. Even if you are enjoying a high level of
physical comforts, you would not be happy, if you are being bombarded with emotions and
pains. They disturb the serenity of the mind.
People still believe that thinking about the happy moments in ones own life is one of the
happiest things that one can do. That is an effective way of getting out of ones own miseries
temporarily. Contemplating over the happy memories in the past or even building up of a dream
world for the future can be a useful method of entering into the world of happiness. But it cannot
be sustained for long.
A person cannot be happy unless his mind agrees that the meswsages he receives through his
body organs.. Or, in other words, the mind can interpret everything and decides whether the activity
causes happiness or unhappiness.
Happiness is a condition of the mind. The other sensual organs can work in collaboration with
the mind to make a person happy.
Tranquility of a stable mind
Tranquility of a stable mind that is not affected by either happy or unhappy thoughts is very
difficult to sustain. This kind of happiness differs from the other kinds of happiness because it
does not involve the other sensory organs, or the happiness is stimulated by the
activites of the other organs such as the eye and ear etc.
A person can seek happiness without either thinking about his past experiences, or into the
future which becomes something similar to the world of dreams. It has been argued that a
person can be very happy if he can forget his past, ignore his future and concentrate only on the
present. This he can do only by meditating about this moment. Say looking at the performance of
his own body or engage in the breathing "in and out" meditation technique known as ana pana sati
in the Pali language. This technique is more than 2500 years old and has been practiced very
effectively and popularly, even by Lord Buddha.
In the long run this type of happiness is possible only if one has relinquished all his desires
and his cravings. It will also be necessary to relinquish all the happy assets he has collected
during his life time and all the relationships he has made with his family and friends. If not,
minor embarrassments could disturb your levels of happiness incessantly. It is difficult to build
firewalls to prevent emotions from disturbing your levels of happiness and tranquility at such
levels. Those noble individuals who are not affected by greed, ignorance or fear, known as
arahants in Buddhism could enjoy such happiness in the long run.
But in the short run, any person can enjoy happiness, if he develops his mind power to such a level
that he gets into a trance for short periods.
Those individuals who leave all their worldly belonging and move away from their family
environments
continue meditating in secluded places because they think they are happy or are striving for
eternal happiness.
A definition of happiness
Happiness can be defined as:” Happiness is the dividend that accrues to you, for your
investments, to make others happy. These investments could be made either in words, deeds
or even in thoughts."
This definition differs from most others due to its focus on the happiness of others, more than of
being self-centered, more than being an aggressive collector of an elusive commodity called
happiness.
It is very easy to understand this concept, if we look at the simplest situation that one
experiences in every house hold.
Mother and child
How happy is a mother when she is barest-feeding her baby, with her own blood, converted to
milk? When doing that, she has no other concerns other than making her own baby happy.
Every time she reflects on those moments she might enter in to a different world of happiness. She,
sometimes suffers, physically, to enjoy this activity with her own child.
Can her own baby-sitter enter into the same world of happiness while feeding the same baby, with
the milk she has purchased from the market? The servant, except in very exceptional
circumstances, feeds the baby as a part of her job. In this case she is looking after her own
interests, salary and other benefits, and not to make the baby happy.
Now let us look at happiness from a different perspective: the real experience of a senior citizen.
The wisdom of old age
"At this ripe age of 65, I have realized one basic truth about life: I am growing old, day by day, and
year by year. Therefore, my aspirations, competences, dreams, my health and every thing that I,
so far called mine, have changed; and are changing. It will continue to change until my death
which is the only thing definite about my life now.
This change creates a basic fear, an inadequacy, and incompleteness in my life. It should also
be the same with you if you are of my age!
I am striving to be complete. This struggle of mine to be complete is common to all human
beings. It is this craving to be complete, it is this uncertainty about relationships, the ego, fear of
sickness, and fear of suffering and death that make me look for opportunities to be happy.
In other words, happiness to me is a temporary heaven, until the next catastrophe occurs. Hoping
that I would be free of temporary or permanent problems, I trudge along, to the best of my ability to
keep myself happy.
I am absolutely sure, that, it would be very difficult to achieve that completeness I am dreaming
of; and no body would be 100% successful in achieving it. Yet we keep on trying to be complete.
That is the human nature. As far as I am concerned, I believe that nothing is impossible, and
therefore my struggle for happiness continues, in spite of my partial failures and incomplete
successes.
That non-ending struggle to achieve an undefined goal, makes us go in search of things which
we are not sure of, or not definite. These values, sometimes, we can reach; sometimes, we
miss; sometimes, we have to postpone; sometimes, we are frustrated. The end result decides
whether we are happy or unhappy."
I am convinced that happiness is the other side of Suffering. Suffering is a part of life and
no body can avoid or help you to avoid suffering due to birth, ageing, sickness and death. So to
mitigate our suffering we go in search of happiness.
A caser study:Sompal de Unhappi
:Sompal de Unhappi moves into a higher echelon of happiness
Happiness is created by the generation of happy thoughts; and thoughts are generated by the
mind with or without the association of the other five senses: the eye, the ear, the nose, the
mouth and the body. We do everything to gratify our desires and cravings which are demanded by
these sensory organs
Happy thoughts are the results of our association with happy assets. Sompal after his big
promotion in his office, decided to invest his new cash flows in the acquisition of new happy assets,
so that he could move into a new level of happiness.
Sompal likes to look at and live with beautiful flowers. So he bought a few roses to be kept in his
apartment. When you see the flowers like beautiful roses, you expect the rose to create a
happy thought in your mind, because you like flowers. [gratification of the eye.]
As he enjoys listening to good music he invested in a set of new equipment to listen to good
music[ to gratify his ears]
Sompal also bought some ice cream and kept it in his refrigerator because he ice-
cream is his favorite dessert..[pleasing his tongue]
He bought some exotic perfumes for his girl friend, because she likes to use perfumes and
she will be happy using it. [gratifying the nose].
Sompal also purchased an air conditioner because he likes and enjoys living in a cooler
environment [gratification of the body].
All these assets he acquired as a preliminary step in getting married.
Can these happy assets guarantee his happiness? For how long?
The happiness created by the ownership or the use of the above assets was short lived, because
happy thoughts created by those objects could not be sustained for long periods of time.
Whatever the asset is, it is subject to the laws of non-permanence. Some deteriorate faster, and
some very slowly. When they disappear, your happy thoughts will also be transformed into
unhappy thoughts. That could make you unhappy.
Everything Changed.
Unfortunately, for Sompal, the source of electricity supply to his apartment area was
destroyed by a tsunami wave. As a result, the air-conditioner ceased to function and his
apartment was without electricity; the ice-cream started melting in the refrigerator. He had no
information about his girl friend, because of the disturbance to the communication system. It
becomes a major worry. He was even without music.
This is a very realistic situation in the current environment. While thinking about his happiness
or the unhappiness, he decided to rectify the situation temporarily, by hiring out a small home
generator with which he could even operate the air conditioner. He could not give life to the
rose, because it had already withered; but the other assets, he thought would continue to
generate the feelings and happy thoughts for Sompal.
Happiness and Unhappiness.
Happiness and unhappiness are neighbors. They are separated by a thin margin called the
White Margin--the Zone of Indifference [ZOI] HappiLogo The ZOI is a realistic situation where a
person is
neither happy nor unhappy. This situation exists because we do not have time to think of our
own happiness or unhappiness; we do not understand the end result, because we are caught in
the commercial storms that keep on blowing all the time.
Most of the time, we live and work within this Zone of Indifference [white area] where we are
either too busy to be thinking of our happiness or unconcerned about ourselves. That is when
we are engrossed or engaged in different thoughts, stronger thoughts, or just tired.
Sometimes, our minds are tired or too lazy to be thinking of anything. At such times, our minds
are attracted to an object or to an event or a thought that is either too attractive for our mind or
unattractive for our eyes, ears, nose, tongue or our body. That means we have actually forgotten,
at least temporarily, that we are either happy or unhappy.
However unhappy you are, that unhappiness can temporarily be forgotten or suspended, or even
disappear completely, if a person dear to your heart joins you for a meal which you enjoy. Under
such circumstances, your unhappiness might be covered with a thin cloud of temporary
happiness which you achieve through the association of your friend. Even if you do not enjoy that
meal, the
association with your friend, can make you forget your unhappiness and even be happy for a
short period. That means you might get into and out of your gray area, into the red, and into the
white again. This movement up and down the happy grid is a normal happening.
The other side is also the same. The happy moments of your life, say, after you have either won
a coveted trophy or a competition after long years of preparation, can be marred by an event, or
even a thought that might push you into the gray area or into the fields of unhappiness.
In a situation like that, what decides whether you are unhappy or happy is the importance you
attach to that event, the feeling or the thought.
The only person that can make you happy is YOU and only you. Others could contribute to make
you feel miserable, or happy. But the ultimate control is in your own head. Others can only build
an environment and you create your own world of happiness or unhappiness within that
environment.
That is the reason why happiness remains an elusive commodity to those of us who are living in
a world where the environment has taken the upper hand. We are forced to move forward and
backward in our own living environment. So, the ultimate result is that your happiness levels
change with the environment. This can be changed. But it is difficult; not impossible.
A normal day.
This explains the logic why some individuals prefer to move into forest hermitages, so that they are
not being disturbed by changes in their environments.
Let’s look at the start of a normal day.
You have slept well, sans bad dreams. You get up from bed with a quiet and a comfortable
mind. You may be positioning yourself in any of the three ellipses shown in the diagram,
depending on the environment at your home.
With the commencement of a normal day, your mind is pure, not tainted by any influence in the
environment. Exceptions are there; but rare.
Then the media opens up with all sorts of news, both good and bad. This could be from your
family or from outside. Then, the moods begin to change. If there is an item of news that makes
you unhappy, you might move into the gray ellipse and commence the day from a grey area.
However, depending on the changes in the environment in which you live in, the nature of
thoughts that enters into your head changes. This is the main cause that changes the levels of
our happiness or unhappiness.
Happiness & Unhappiness
In the diagram, the grey area denotes unhappiness. The red is happiness. The area, in between
the red and grey shows the area where you are neither happy nor unhappy.
Even though the thoughts are generated from inside your head without any influence from the
environment, they could make you change. May be, that the thoughts could be triggered by
reminiscences of your past experiences or even by future plans.
Sometimes, you might end the major part of the day in the red ellipse, if the news you hear, read
or see are to your advantage, and helps you reach any of your goals. Then you might classify the
day as a good one, or a happy one. It might be a happy one because you might have the hope
that the changes might help you, in achieving or in completion of your goals, at least partially.
This is subjective to the fact that there are no other forces to disturb your tranquility.
Sometimes, you might call it an unhappy day, if the thoughts that come to your head are of a
disturbing nature.
Under an umbrella
It is a sunny day. The sun is shinning and the feelings of sunshine and warmth make the hearts
happy, even though there may be a few dark clouds passing over your head casting light
shadows.
Happiness is similar. There may be a few darker moments in a perfectly happy day. Yet you may
call it a happy day, because you are aware that a perfect day is impossible in an environment
such as ours.
Accordingly, on any normal day you move from the grey ellipse to the red one and back again.
It is a highly dynamic environment; and never static. The objective is to stay within the red ellipse
as long as possible.
The scenario described above is for a day--a very short period of our life. What happened in the
previous day and during the previous year will continue to affect our thoughts. The short period
we described above is a minute part of the long life history.
If you were under the influence of a series of embarrassing thoughts during the immediate past,
or say, yesterday, those thoughts would haunt you until you manage to get rid of the thoughts or
the problem to your satisfaction.
Problems or worries, once again are the fabrications of your own thoughts.
The thoughts could also be happy thoughts about happy moments of your life or things that you
have done to make others happy. What ever the nature of thoughts are, they could take
precedence over unhappy thoughts, depending on the importance that you attach to each
individual thought.
What is your experience?
What do you think of your own life during the last one month? You would have noticed that you
have been happy on some days, at certain times, and have been very unhappy during some
other times. There have been times when you were neither happy nor unhappy.
What are the things that make you unhappy?
What are the things that make you happy?
The list below, gives some of the activities that could make most of us unhappy.
We are unhappy when:
- • When people show anger and hatred towards us.
• .When we are ignored.
• When we are denied of the good name we deserve.
• When they do not play the role they are expected to play.
• When we are sick
• When losses are experienced in one way or another
What are the things that make you happy or unhappy? Can we make a list like the one above?
Then you would really see for yourselves whether they are real or imaginary? Do you have to get
angry at a person who stares at you or laughs at the way how you walk? Can we ignore such
things and remain in the white area?
It is you and only you can decide on such things.
The environment in the Happyraj is designed to reduce the fluctuations in the levels of
happiness enjoyed by the guests. It is exactly the opposite in the case of HappiCraft.
Happiness Action Plan and formula for happiness
A case study on Happiness
Are you suffering
Happiness and Unhappiness
Enemies of Happiness
Revised on: 2008 August 10. Copyright: HappiCraft.com Contact address: nihal@happicraft.com
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