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Thursday, June 28, 2007Posts in the [Happiness] series:
- How To Be Happy
- How To Be Truly Happy
If you read my previous post about “How to be happy” and agree with me, I’m quite sure you will remember my promise that “I’ll share with you about the traps you may encounter on your path to become truly happy”
Before you continue to read, please allow me to quote what I wrote in the conclusion of my first post: “this may not work to everyone because we, human beings, are so different and diversified in nature to share the same formula of happiness”. Thus, basically, I’ll just share what works for me here and hope it may work for you too.
Also in the first post, I shared with you that if we aren’t grateful of what we have and accept ourselves as we’re, the car we drive, the house we stay, the job we have,… will only bring “instant happiness”. However, there is a dangerous trap here we must be aware of. If we become “too grateful” of what we have and “accept ourselves too much”, what will happen?
The answer is we stop achieving and we stop growing as a person. With time, we’ll have less and less to be grateful of, and we’ll see ourselves accept a lower and lower standard. Hence, we’ll eventually have less and less happiness. What I meant was we should never let our gratefulness and self-acceptance become a self-destructive contentment. As we all know, the world is moving, if we stop, we’ll be left behind. It holds true no matter whether you accept it or not. That’s the reason why even if we feel very happy now, we must continue to strive for a bigger plan and a greater achievement. Yes, you may not really need more to be happier now…, and yes, having more may not be necessary for you to be happier now, because you’ve been very happy already.
However, think about it as an insurance policy for your happiness. Life isn’t always easy and the good time may not last forever. Thus, we should never have just enough to be happy. We should have more and more so that when the difficult time comes, we’re ready. Even if we lost a few things we’re grateful of, we still had many other things that we can be grateful of left. That’s how our happiness secured.
I fell in that trap of self-destructive contentment once. That was how I knew about it. During that time, I had a good job and a good pay. I had someone I truly love. I felt so happy that I decided it was enough for me. Hence, I spent most of my free time in some online game and became so addicted to it. Until one day I lost my job because my boss went bankrupt. Worse, I got my 3-month worth of salary stuck with him. Suddenly, I found myself spending the last few dollars of my savings when my wedding was coming. I wished I had spent my time building some sideline businesses or passive source of income, but the fact was I hadn’t never done that.
After I had recovered from the hit, I swore to myself that I wouldn’t never let it happen again. Unfortunately, it was the beginning of my falling into another trap.
What is the second trap then? It’s totally opposite to the first trap. It’s the trap of hurry and rushing. If we’re too hurry in order to create more achievements to secure our happiness, we may unintentionally burn ourselves and our happiness out before we can achieve something. I fell exactly into that trap.
I became so hurry in executing my plan to success that I made some mistakes a long the way. Not big mistakes, but they were enough to take away some happiness I managed to create inside me. That was when I told myself: “Ok, just slow down. Life is a marathon. I should enjoy the journey instead of rushing for the goal and paying the price”.
All in all, my secret of true happiness can be said in one word only: BALANCE. To be really happy, we need the know how to create the happiness inside and at the same time to secure the sources of happiness. If we focus too much on just creating the happiness inside, we risk our sources of happiness. In contrast, if we focus too much on securing the sources of happiness, we risk the happiness we create inside.
Though the word BALANCE seems to be simple and easy, it is really an art of living. We may all know it, but how many of us can actually get it right? I believe each of us will have to pay a price to understand it, and it’s actually different thing for each of us. Anyway, I paid my price, and I hope what I wrote here will help you pay the least price for your true happiness.
All the best to you, my friend!
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1 person has left a comment
Nice. Same situation here. Back in 2001, I was young, single, 22 yrs old with a 60,000 USD per year job, doing what I like (Information Technology) for the top petro company in the world (stock symbol: XOM). I bought so many expensive toys, but always feel I was missing something. 7yrs later I’m slowly learning and appreciating all the things I am blessed with. Yes BALANCE and TIMING is quite important in life.