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If You’re Happy And You Know It Clap Your Hands!

Are you Happy?

Are you happy? While many people believe that accumulating wealth leads to happiness, on the contrary, money can’t buy happiness. In fact, external factors in general have a limited impact on happiness. Wealth and social status do have some effect on your happiness, but they only account for about 10 to 20% of it. 

What is Happiness?

Happiness would likely be out of reach if it was purely an external phenomenon. This is because our desires are limitless – the amount of control one have over the world, on the other hand, is very limited. Love, is a good example. There is no way to ensure that your lover will always love you back. So, if your happiness depends on that, you are likely setting yourself for both heartbreak and disappointment.

A person might get excited about buying a new car, for example, only to have that joy squashed when a newer model arrives. That is what happens when you seek happiness from external sources, instead of focusing on your inner being. 

Hence it is useless to cling onto temporary things like cars. Accepting that is the first step towards finding inner peace and tranquillity. True happiness comes from reaching such a high state of inner well-being that you are no longer affect by failure. 

Happiness is not the same thing as pleasure

Pleasure might seem like the fastest and easiest road to happiness, but sooner or later, you will come to a dead end. Pleasure is momentary by nature; it occurs under certain circumstances at a certain time. A pleasurable experience can quickly become neutral or unpleasant because pleasure is so unstable and fleeting. Your favourite food might be delicious and gives you pleasure for a while, but too much of it will make you sick. Long-lasting happiness, on the other hand, should not be confused with pleasure; such things are short-term and will not have much influence on your well-being. 

A study found that even winning a lottery does not change a person’s happiness that much. It causes a temporary spike in happiness but does nothing to prevent that happiness from falling back to normal levels. 

Happiness is about freeing yourself from worries about life

While suffering is universal and unavoidable, our pain does not actually stem from the suffering that we experience. Instead, it comes from the unhappiness that we create. If a person loses her job, for example, she will be unhappy. That unhappiness does not actually result from the loss of the job itself but from the person’s fears and worries about the loss of wealth, status and career prospects. Giving up this unnecessary worrying is the key towards true and long-lasting happiness.

Freeing yourself from your own ego

The concepts of identity and status are closely connected to unhappiness. This is why it is important to detach yourself from your ego. A person who clings to a specific self-imge will do anything to make sure that that image is recognised and accepted. The ego is simply too fragile to be a reliable foundation. When you think highly of yourself, you are putting yourself at risk of being emotionally shut down when things go wrong. This is why it is important to detach yourself from your ego. By doing this, you become less vulnerable, and develop an inner strength that leads you towards true happiness. 

Humility is also another important part to ego-free happiness. If you are humble, you do not need validations from other people, and this gives you a sense of freedom that can prevent much distress and disappointment. Hence, humility can be seen as the source of inner freedom. Also, when you become humble, you focus more on other people’s concerns (instead of your own). 

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Achieving long-lasting happiness is hard work. It requires overcoming your ego, reconciling yourself to negative emotions, and reorienting your world view. While it takes time, you will achieve a long-lasting happiness that is more fulfilling than any temporary pleasure from wealth or fame. 

​(Adapted from “Happiness” by Matthiu Ricard)

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