Happiness

Our happiness is governed by our behaviour. People seldom 'act'. We are masters of 'reacting'. This leads to a lot of unnecessary strife. Awareness of all the actors/players in a given situation and repercussions of your words/actions are not thought about clearly. To be truly happy one needs to do the following:
  1. Living the moment i.e. live in the present as usually we only have thoughts of our future or events of the past in our minds. This means mentally we live in the past or in the future.
  2. Most human interactions are transactional, although some not overtly so. Attempts to have a win-win conclusion for anything is preferable.
  3. Anxiety is a difficult beast to tackle. Regular practice of pranayaam or yog would help keep it reigned in.
  4. Avoiding procrastination is perhaps the most difficult thing to achieve. All of us procrastinate right from the most mundane of decisions to the very difficult life-altering ones. One should act as soon as possible after giving reasonable thought. Too often we think about how others might react or of possible failure.
  5. Asking questions. This is the most underrated superpower. I read somewhere recently that 'I would rather appear stupid by asking questions rather than remain stupid for the rest of my life.' 
  6. Taking charge of situations. This is an off shoot of procrastination. Take charge, assume responsibility, be accountable to yourself and to others, own up and more importantly ACT.
  7. Study of mental models would help a lot (fs.blog)
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I read today an excerpt of Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. This is simply wonderful!
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

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