Nurture Your Happiness

There has been a recent surge amongst researchers, educators, scientists and doctors in sharing their knowledge about finding the quest to Happiness. If you step into a bookstore, you will see bookshelves filled with a variety of books written by various authors sharing their ‘Secrets to Happiness’. Some of us may have already found this ‘special ingredient to life’ – but for others, it may take an entire lifetime to even begin to understand what the true essence of Happiness really is.

Happy is defined as the following in The Collins English Dictionary:
“Feeling, showing joy.” Therefore, Happy + ness = Happiness. By simply adding this suffix to the adjective Happy, it transforms it into a certain “state, condition or quality.”

Is it that simple? That is the mystery question for many of us and perhaps it may not be as simple as that.

We may need to REFLECT on our own personal experiences starting right from childhood, adolescence through to adulthood.

As children, we all start off by needing the very same things no matter where you were born including Love, Food, Shelter, Safety and Security just to mention a few. Therefore, it is obvious we all start off with NEEDING the same things.

As we begin to grow up, these needs begin to CHANGE as our personalities and characteristics take shape, and then we begin to EXPERIENCE different things during our adolescence. As we all know, adolescence has been referred to as a ‘rebellious stage’ mainly caused by the physiological changes that occur. Nonetheless, adolescence helps us TRANSITION into ADULTHOOD with a bit of know-how. However, do we really know how to experience happiness as adults notwithstanding that by this time in our life we do have so much knowledge and life experiences?

What happened to that child that was filled with so much curiosity about the world? How about that rebellious adolescent who wanted to change the world? Has the adult become overburdened and lost?

Happiness will certainly present itself as a CHOICE as to what matters most in one’s life and how one wishes to live each day. This is very personal to each individual. To be sure, there are specific things that one can EMBRACE in order to achieve HAPPINESS while on this lifetime journey including kindness, mindfulness and selflessness just to mention a few.

We have certainly come to realize during this most challenging time that we are all facing whether as children, adolescents or adults, that our human connectedness allows us to rely on each other in order to achieve HAPPINESS in our life.

Remain in the present so that HAPPINESS can be felt no matter what.

Allow yourself to feel HAPPINESS so that the lingering effects of gratitude can be shared and felt by others too.