If you are not happy, it’s because you haven’t done something today that makes your day meaningful. Therefore, you should be clear about what is meaningful in your life first, and then add values to your day.
What could be those meaningful flowers of your day? It could be taking one step toward your objectives, elevating other people’s mood or simply thanking God for a new opportunity of living. Another approach could consist of listing all the fears and aspirations you have and try to tackle them one at a time each of your days. But don’t worry if you feel stuck at some points in your life, because these moments of reflection are very important and necessary for you to see what is not working to figure out a wise next step. Therefore, it is sensible to embrace life as it is and drink the bitter remedy of doubt and not knowing.
So, yes life isn’t easy, it’s a challenge that we have to take up every day, that’s why it seems exhausting sometimes. Being a good observant of others actions and the final result of their actions will increase our sense of satisfaction and appreciation. We forget our achievements and what we spent days aspiring and putting effort into reaching them.We see ourselves sitting on an arrow pointing toward a sibel worrying about whether we hit the center or not, while we forget we are not the arrow rather the archer who shoots towards the sibel. This change of point of view changes the final result greatly from just hitting the goal as an arrow or reflecting on each result and analyzing and improving our shooting skill.
The necessity of splitting your days in 3 consciously lived moments
Because you aspire to greatness and want to be happy now, you actually have 2 contradictory ideas that don’t really coexist well together. If you want to achieve greatness, you need to acknowledge that you might feel uneasy most of your day because who you are now is different from who you want to be. That’s why, trying to be successful is a source of suffering all the way. However, when you take a step back to contemplate what you have already accomplished, you could easily feel satisfaction and gratitude regarding the improvement you made. This explains why if you want to be happy, you have to stop and reward yourself somehow, otherwise your frustration will make you want to give up on all the objectives you set up. When you have reflected on your past achievements and decided who you want to be in the future, you need to focus on the present that is working actively to execute the plan you have chosen. Essentially, you would spend 10% of your time thinking of the past, the same amount for the future and the remaining 80% should be devoted toward the present.
If you are really immersed in the action you do, you won’t have time to worry or feel unhappy, you’ll feel a sense of control and achievement which will nurture your happiness.It is beneficial though to stop your work from time to time to reflect where are you going and to come back to the track. Our brain tends to find the easiest track to fall into and the corrections from time to time might not be pleasant albeit very necessary.
To live fully, you need to empty your mind
Most of the unhappiness is created in your mind. Basically, you feel bad because of what your mind pictures of a given situation. To actively fight this phenomenon, you should implement a routine during your day that will contribute to emptying your mind from parasite thoughts. As we have just seen, if you devote yourself to a deliberate practice of intense activities, you will reap the reward of quietness of mind. This is one way of doing achieving self satisfaction which is related to a certain degree to the emptiness of mind.
3 ways of emptying your mind
Acting without expectation for the results. A lot of our anxiety is due to the result we attach to our actions. That’s why learning to be detached from our actions can be a good way to learn to be happier. How to do so?
Just focusing mainly on action
Because we have been raised with grades and incentives, our brains are wired in the way we look for results mainly. By doing so, we may get blocked and not even produce any work. We also tend to want to achieve the perfect work, but as you may know already, perfectionism is one great source of procrastination. Then, it is important to have objectives that are more effort-related rather than result-related so we keep control over our happiness.
Sleeping and napping
Most of our unconscious minds thrive during sleeping periods. The better our brain is the better we perform and are able to attain a certain level of relaxation. Our brain needs sleep because it is also during sleep it recovers from all the “mental injuries” it endures during daytime. While it’s important to increase our level of activity by implementing deliberate practice, it is also necessary to keep the right balance between effort and rest. Ideally, it would be better to wake up early to increase our morning yield while having a nap in the afternoon to spare our brain and consequently thinking less.
Meditation
Meditation allows us to get detached from our thoughts and not get too identified to them. We don’t necessarily need to meditate 1-2 hours a day. It is already effective to punctuate our day with short meditation breaks (5 to 10 min) to reap the benefits previously mentioned.
