Discovering Your Dreams Is the First Step to Happiness

The celebrated author Aldous Huxley said that “there’s only a small part of the universe that you know for sure can be improved, and that part is you.” If we go with this reasoning, it seems evident that discovering your dreams can be an exceptional first step to becoming happy through self-knowledge.

Following Huxley’s reasoning, we can conclude that knowing yourself, in a sincere and introspective way can be a great step towards happiness.

The human being in the universe

Let’s keep going with our thought process based on Huxley’s phrase. For this, we have to perform a complex exercise. Let’s visualize the universe that surrounds us in all of its immensity. An empty space full of galaxies, stars and planets of such a size that it’s even hard to imagine.

The next step we propose basing this process on Huxley’s affirmation would be to observe our planet within that immense universe we visualized. If you think about it, the Earth is gigantic to each person, but if you look at it from a universal point of view, it’s less significant than a speck of dust in a desert of vast proportions.

Within this trivial speck of dust among such a vast immensity… there’s you. A tiny, singular being that’s aware of its existence in an uncontrollable world of such biblical proportions that it boggles our mind and imagination.

Doesn’t everything seem so huge and uncontrollable? However, here you are. With a conscience of your very own, fully aware. In fact, the only thing you can be sure of is your own existence. We are small, but autonomous. Once you are aware of this, you have already taken the first step to discovering your dreams, getting to know yourself better and trying to find happiness.

How to discover your dreams

In order to discover your dreams, you need to explore the field of self-knowledge. This is so simple and at the same time very complicated, getting to know yourself a little bit better every single day. Nevertheless, it is not as simple as we’d like to think.

The Canadian academic Hayakawa said that “he who admits that he knows little about himself has better opportunities of discovering things about himself before dying.” Based on this humble premise, there are two branches of psychology that can help in this complex task:

• Introspection: Introspection is an exercise in looking inwards. Thanks to this branch, you can get to know your situation and mental state better while you analyze your emotional and cognitive processes in various psychological and philosophical aspects.
• Evolutionary psychology: It consists in the study of the changes produced within the human being throughout its life. Its fields of work are reactions to the environment, states that get more and more complex over time and acquiring more knowledge about oneself through the use of scientific instruments.