“We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same” Carlos Castaneda
Wellbeing, energy and vitality are in essence what The Ayurvedic Lab is about and as much as practical solutions based on lifestyle, diet, daily routines and a healthy regime are the solid building blocks we use, essentially they are all build on the common denominator of (creating) happiness.
Now that can be an elusive ingredient… unless you’re equipped with sound tools.
Here are our 4 bulletproof steps to be happy on the daily:
EFFECTIVENESS
Feeling powerful, strong and efficient is crucial. When you can feel that you are effective in your life or effective in whatever you are doing in you life that is a tremendous base to feeling happy. Along with the other steps we’ll cover here, feeling effective and competent is incredibly supportive to feeling content and secure.
Feeling competent is not actually to do with performance. Many people are very skilled in what they do and very talented but feel deeply insecure in themselves, helpless or even powerless. And yet they have a high degree of skills that bring solid results and demonstrates achievements but that is not how they feel about themselves.
How do you feel effective: that is simply a decision that you make. Starting to notice and enhance those areas of your life where you are efficient and capable. Focussing on those often until you build confidence in yourself to create more skills.
Spend time on what you’re good at. Think of it, talk of it, remind yourself of it. Trust yourself. Find a way even small to be useful.
If you can’t at first see areas of your life where you are effective then strip back to basic life skills you possess as much as everyone else and praise yourself and recognise those skills in you. Continue to bring awareness to your abilities more until you build self-confidence in the form of effectiveness more and more in your life.
Feeling effective is ultimately a decision you have to make for yourself. In some cases parents, teachers or circumstances may have created ingrained rules about your lack of competence which you’ll need to overcome by simply deciding that you have a right to feel competent and back that up with a ton of motivation (that is repeat : repeat : repeat).
As you begin to feel and act competent, reinforcing that assumption frequently, you will inevitably become more and more effective. That is a choice you make.
PURPOSE
Decide that your life has purpose.
No one can give you purpose or make you feel like you have a purpose without you feeling trapped or like you are fulfilling someone else’s vision.
However if you decide that you live a purposeful life, that you yourself have purpose then you will see that decision manifest into reality in your life.
Your state of mind creates your actions and reality and though you might not yet know what it is that you can do for purpose, making the decision will start you off acting accordingly over and over again until you will be doing it and knowing that what you are doing is your purpose.
LOVE
Not a word anyone wants to be talking about out aloud nowadays. But necessary.
The third tenant to happiness is to feel loved. And once again we come to a single powerful decision we must make that we are loved and we feel loved.
You must simply decide and be firmly convinced that you are loved. Without any attachment to specific behaviours or specific people or specific situations/religious figures etc. Any specifics will send you back into a situation of lack and insecurity.
Learn to accept unconditional love as the premise to your being. Decide that you are loved no matter what happens, no matter what people say or do.
If you can maintain that feeling no matter what is happening around you you will feel confident to handle and deal with anything.
I’m not going to go into a long discussion of what people do to eachother or themselves when feeling unloved but I’m sure you can come up with some ideas. Nothing based on trying to compensate will make you happy.
But if you can be the authority on your feeling loved you have it made!
PRACTISE BEING HAPPY
Happiness is something you learn. Or re-learn. Most of us were happy kids until we learnt how not to be happy only to try and learn how to be happy again.
As with any other skill you learn how by actively practising to be happy. Pay attention to those moments when you are happy, decide and define what they are and recreate them as a feeling. Be aware of what your body, mind and feelings are doing in those happy moments and repeat them.
Make a habit of happiness not by recreating the actual details of the event that made you happy but the feeling. With practise you will more easily naturally shift your attention on certain behaviours and thoughts that create happiness.
In conclusion I quote Serge Kahili King again who wrote on the subject first in his book Endless Energy:
“You can remind yourself that you are loved and decide to feel loved. You can remind yourself of your efffectiveness and do something effective, then decide to feel effective; and remind yourself of your purpose go out and do something toward fulfilling that purpose, and decide to feel purposeful. And use any or all of that to feel happy.
Happiness is a choice, and happiness is the most important thing there is.
The most successful people are those who love themselves the most. The most happy successful people are those whose sense of self extends to others.”
Anne Schouvey 