How to be Genuinely Happy

Life isn’t the sweet­est candy. Some­times, when I feel like the world is just too heavy, I look around and find peo­ple who con­tin­ued to live fas­ci­nat­ing and won­der­ful lives. And then thoughts come pop­ping into my mind like bub­bles from nowhere – “How did their life become so adorably sweet? How come they still can man­age to laugh and play around despite a busy stress­ful life?” Then I pause and observed for awhile… I fig­ured out that maybe, they start to work on a place called ‘self’.

How does one become gen­uinely happy? The step one is to love yourself.

My the­ol­ogy pro­fes­sor once said that “lov­ing means accept­ing.” To love one­self means to accept that you are not a per­fect being, but behind the imper­fec­tions must lie a great ounce of courage to be able to dis­cover ways on how to improve your reper­toire to recover from our mistakes.

Gen­uine hap­pi­ness also per­tains to con­tent­ment. When you are con­tented with the job you have, the way you look, with your fam­ily, your friends, the place you live in, your car, and all the things you now have – truly, you know the answer to the ques­tion “how to be gen­uinely happy.”

When we dis­cover a small start some­where from within, that small start will even­tu­ally lead to some­thing else, and to some­thing else. But if you keep ques­tion­ing life lit it has never done you any good, you will never be able to find gen­uine happiness.

Many peo­ple believe that life is about find­ing out about right and wrong, try­ing and fail­ing, win­ing and los­ing. These are things that hap­pen as often as you inhale and exhale. Fail­ure, in a person’s life has become as abun­dant and nec­es­sary as air. But this should not hin­der us from becom­ing happy.

How to be gen­uinely happy in spite all these? I tell you… every time you exert effort to improve the qual­ity of life and your being, whether it is clean­ing up your room, help­ing a friend, tak­ing care of your sick dog, fail on board exams and try­ing again, life gives you equiv­a­lent points for that.

Imag­ine life as a big score board like those which are used in the NFLs. Every time you take a step for­ward, you make scor­ing points. Wouldn’t it be nice to look at that board at the end of each game and think to your­self “Whew! I got a point today. I’m glad I gave it a shot.”, instead of look­ing at it all blank and mur­mur “Geez, I didn’t even hit a score today. I wish I had the guts to try out. We could have won!” and then walk away.

Gen­uine hap­pi­ness isn’t about dri­ving the hottest For­mula 1 car, nor get­ting the employee of the year award, earn­ing the high­est 13th month pay, or beat­ing the sales quota. Some­times, the most sought after prizes in life doesn’t always go to the fastest, the strongest, the bravest or not even the best. So, how do you become gen­uinely happy?

Every one has his own def­i­n­i­tion of ‘hap­pi­ness’. Hap­pi­ness for a writer may mean launch­ing as much best sell­ing books as pos­si­ble. Hap­pi­ness for a bas­ket­ball rookie may mean get­ting the rookie of the year award. Hap­pi­ness for a beg­gar may mean a lot of money. Hap­pi­ness for a busi­ness man may mean suc­cess. So, really now, how do we become gen­uinely happy?

Sim­ple. You don’t have to have the best things in this world. Its about doing and mak­ing the best out of every sin­gle thing. When you find your­self smil­ing at your own mis­take and telling your self “Oh, I’ll do bet­ter next time”, you carry with you a flame of strong will power to per­se­vere that may spread out like a brush fire. You pos­sess a will­ing­ness to stand up again and try – that will make you a gen­uinely happy person.

When you learn to accept your­self and your own faults. You pass step 1 in the project “how to become gen­uinely happy”. For as long as you know how to accept oth­ers, you will also be accepted. For as long as you love and know how to love, you will receive love ten folds back.

Again, throw me that same ques­tion “how to become gen­uinely happy?”. I’ll refer you to a friend of mine who strongly quoted — “Most of us know that laugh­ter is the best med­i­cine to life’s aches and pain. But most of us don’t know that the best kind of laugh­ter is laugh­ter over self. Because then you don’t just become happy … you become free.”