are YOU within or without?

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
― Albert Camus

“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Garden of Eden

find your happiness within you, rather than outside yourself


Happiness is the reason for most human actions. We do most of the things we do because we like to be happy. The reason being that when we are happy, we are able to be ourselves, focus and actualise. Happiness gives us peace and unhappiness tends to make us destabilized and without focus. Happiness is contagious and is reflected on others surrounding us, so also is unhappiness. The search for happiness comes in two folds; human beings search for happiness outside themselves or inside.

Those who search for happiness outside themselves try to find such in objects, people or materials outside themselves. Such source of happiness may be spouses, organisation, materials such as drink or drugs. Whenever they love and have such things they are happy. If something however happens and they lose such organisation, materials or even spouses, they become unhappy. If it is work that serves as such people’s hope of happiness, the moment they cannot do the work or they are sacked, they become useless.

Those who search for happiness within themselves however do create a space within them that nothing can touch. If times are bad, they can go into such corners of their inner being and live. They replay their happy moments over and over till the bad times pass. The fact that what makes them happy is inside them makes it possible for them to cope with any kind of situation. They then develop a rounded outlook to life with the understanding that life comes in circles and that when bad time comes it will be followed by good times. As Goethe rightly puts it, “the happiest people don’t necessarily have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything”.

They tend to be able to have good shock absorber, making them to understand other people and relate to them. The fact that they are able to overcome life problems makes them appealing to other people. This in turn helps them to develop their self- concept.Since happiness is contagious, people tend to congregate around them because they are sure that whenever they are in the happy people’s orbit, they will  also be happy.

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