The Best Thing You Can Do To Yourself & Others

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If you smile and shine, others have a reason to be happy.

What’s the best thing you can do for yourself and others? It’s to be happy! When you are happy, you spread happiness naturally. When you are unhappy, unhappiness you spread. We cannot make this world a better place if we are miserable and unhappy. Because when we are unhappy, we don’t care about others, we become concerned only about ourselves. We become selfish. Only unhappy people are selfish. A truly joyful person gives himself away. One who is joyful doesn’t care about his concerns all the time, he can think about others, feel others’ pain and go out in the world to do whatever he can. But miserable people always remain selfish. 

Therefore the best thing that you can do for yourself and for others is—to be happy. Happiness is the greatest antidote to all the negativity, selfishness and evils in life. Be happy!

How To Be Happy?

This is probably the greatest question to us besides ‘who am I’. We even desire God to be happy! Isn’t it so? Where there is no happiness, nobody wants to go there. We want to go to heaven only because it promises us happiness!

I said: be happy. Now, it’s easier said than done, I know. All our life, everything we do, we do to be happy. Why do we want money, relationships, recognition or love?—To be happy. But, happiness is ever elusive in our lives. It comes and goes, like momentary touches of waves. 

But, as I said, without being happy, we cannot truly help others. Only if we are happy, are we capable of doing great things. But how? That is the question.

I don’t have any advice for you. I’ll just tell you what my principles are. I follow a few simple things, very simple. And they keep me happy whenever I am down with sorrow or misery. Here are my multi-vitamin doses of happiness:

• Don’t Expect Anything From Anyone: It gives me tremendous freedom. Freedom from the world itself. Because the world is just a metonymic expression for humanity. If I am free from man’s influence, I am free from the world. 

• Don’t Take Anything Personally: Life is not about me. Or about anybody. ‘I’ don’t matter. Life is brief, one day nothing will matter. Except how gracefully I lived, how greatly I loved and how much I learnt in this lifetime. I have a separate post on this. Check it here.

• Do Not Worry. Learn How to Think: We are not happy because we have this bad habit of worrying all the time. Only those people worry who don’t know how to think. One who knows how to think will never worry. Worrying is a sign that you are not intellectually mature. You haven’t learnt yet to think rightly. 

• Don’t Be Attached To Anything. Learn To Let Go: Attachment is the ultimate reason of our suffering. Even if you are attached to God, you’ll suffer! Simply because you’re dependent! Only when you find complete independence within yourself, are you boundlessly happy. Remember Ananda? Ananda Tirth didn’t get realisation while Buddha was alive. After Buddha attained Mahaparinirvan and Ananda’s attachment broke, did he find realisation!

• Have Love In Your Heart: A heart that is full with love, can never be miserable. Yes, there will be pain for separation, the longing to be with our loved ones, but misery cannot touch such a soul. Love is the elixir which keeps the soul ever fresh, young and free from blemishes. It’s the ultimate antioxidant of our soul. Keep love alive in your heart. The day love dries up in your heart, you are dead actually. The body will live, but as a life, you’ll be dead. Love. Love. Love your heart out. 

“Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.” —Vincent Van Gogh

• Know Thyself: There’s no greater happiness than to know ourselves in our very essence. As you learn more about yourself, you start to realise the true nature of life and see the right path which leads you to your ultimate destination. As long as we’re lost and misdirected, we cannot hope to be unhappy. A man who knows where his true happiness lies and walks that path, no matter what great tragedies happen to him, he’ll be steady within himself, because he knows where his happiness is; his clarity and conviction takes him across. And nobody can have that clarity and conviction without knowing oneself. Therefore, know thyself.

Last Words

We don’t know how to live, how to love, how to die—that’s why we are unhappy. Know these three things, you’ll be happy. You don’t have to know or learn anything else. Knowing how to live involves the first four points I mentioned. Knowing how to love implies the fifth point. And knowing how to die means to die to our every false identity, and finding our true nature—knowing ourselves.

That’s my recipe of being happy. If you are happy, you are already serving the world. Because nobody is being affected by misery from you at least. Be happy amigos. Be happy.

Love 🙂💕

Alok. 

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Thank You.

Image Credit: istockphoto