3 rules to be happy

As Dalai Lama said: our business is happiness. Each one of us is looking for happiness.
There are three rules you must learn if you want to be happy.
First rule:
Would having money make you happy?
What would you do if you lose all your money?
Does having a very good job make you happy?
What will you do if you lose your job?
If you want your happiness to depend on money, a new car, a party or a sunny day you are depending on something outside you. Your happiness is depending on circumstances that you cannot control.
Happiness is an internal state. You are happy whatever happens to you.
First rule: happiness comes from inside.
Second rule:
Do you think when you get angry, sad, or upset it’s because of something happening around you?
To be happy we must understand how we get our emotions.
Let’s suppose that x is the boyfriend of y. if he puts his hand on her head and plays softly with her hair, probably she will smile from happiness. He is her boyfriend. If a stranger come close to her and start playing with her hair, she will probably feel offended. Same stimulus: Both were caressing her hair, but she had different emotions. In the first time she was happy, while in the second time she was offended.
Let’s take another example. Suppose now that you were walking in a park and you find a student kissing his girlfriend. You smile and tell yourself: it’s good to be in love. Your friend who is walking with you says with bitterness: How come this beautiful woman is talking with that ugly guy? Same situation different emotions: You were happy while your friend was upset.
In these two examples, we always had the same event but different emotions. Why different emotions? Because we had different interpretations.
When an external event happens, your senses detect it and conduct it to your brain. Your brain processes it: It’s good; it’s bad, they are in love; I am better than him and so on. Depending on the interpretation you give, your emotion will be. There’s always a thought before you get an emotion.
Rule number two: Your thoughts create your emotions.
What does this rule really mean? When you are happy, joyful, sad, angry it’s because of your thoughts.
Rule number three:
I like to start with a story:
W Mitchell made a motorbike accident at age of 28. He went into a truck, the gas cap popped off and the fuel was ignited. The next thing he remembered he was in a hospital with three-quarter of his body covered with terrible third degree burn. He was beyond recognition and in a lot of pain. He lost his fingers. Doctors had to cut his toes and put it instead of his fingers. Every time his friends visited him at the hospital they were surprised to see him smiling despite of his tremendous pain. He was always saying: I can focus on my pain or I can focus on the great things that I have and will have in my life; I have chosen greatness over sadness. After his accident, W Mitchell opened a wood stove company and became a millionaire. He became so rich that he bought his own plane. The story doesn’t end here. One day, his plane crushed down and he became paralyzed from his chest down. He was sentenced to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Never less he continued smiling and kept telling his friends: I can focus on my handicap and tell myself about the hundred things that I can’t do or focus on the thousands things that I can still do. After his second accident, he ran twice for mayor of his city, and once for congress. His slogan was: not another pretty face.
I like to link this story with a metaphor:
Life is a like a party and your mind is like a camera. You enter the party with your camera. You can focus your camera on people dancing and say this party is beautiful or focus on the bad food and zoom on it and say: This party is awful.
Rule number three: happiness comes from constantly focusing on positive thoughts.
Bottom line is this:
Happiness is a daily choice you make by the thoughts you chose to have and chose to focus on. You are the master of your own thoughts therefore you are the master of your own happiness.
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