Your Happiness Depends on You

So many of us are in an endless search for happiness; we’re obsessed with obtaining it, but we don’t really have a clear idea of what it is. Happiness is the state that all human beings would like to find themselves in.

What is happiness, really?

In the first place, to know what happiness really is, we would have to ask ourselves a question – What is happiness for me? The answer can end up being rather complex and full of different nuances for each one of us. Happiness is not something that comes from outside or the circumstances we live in, but rather from within ourselves and how we live those experiences.

If we go through life believing that happiness depends on our circumstances, the situations we go through, on having more money, better kids, a good job, a stable relationship, etc., we will constantly be searching for what we are missing, without realizing that happiness has nothing to do with all that.

We can always find happiness within ourselves. It’s not something that comes from outside; it’s a matter of realizing that it doesn’t depend on what we have, but on what we are. This means learning to love ourselves, accept ourselves, and to live with ourselves. These are the keys to uncovering the happiness that dwells within us, no matter what situation we are faced with.

Our attitude towards life changes when we become aware that personal satisfaction is not as fickle as they have made us believe. It doesn’t constantly depend on what is happening around us.

We have the ability to choose how we live our experiences. We can achieve greater harmony and take responsibility for our happiness. It’s not a matter of having more positive experiences than negative ones; it’s about learning to integrate all of these experiences as life learning, since all of them are useful and necessary.

Happiness sells

It’s very common to understand our happiness as dependent on our surroundings; this is how we have been taught to view happiness. This is why the tyranny of happiness exists.

Happiness is sold under formulas on how we must live life, how we must behave, and what we must have. Communications media, the public, and politics make great use of this, taking it upon themselves to share the message that the more things we have, the happier we will be.

Their message is that we must constantly feel positive emotions and we must live in that ideal bubble, which in no way reflects our reality. This is why we experience frustration and, what’s worse, disconnect from ourselves.

The endless search for happiness outside ourselves makes us more distant from ourselves and from the happiness inherent in our nature.

All who find their satisfaction in what they have and what they achieve will end up losing themselves all the same, for this is something unreal. It’s ephemeral. They aren’t authentic needs for satisfaction. They are needs that we have made up.

And the more we have, the more we need, which is where the famous saying from Saint Augustine comes from: “Richer is not he who has more, but who needs the least,” referring to happiness.

All of this dependence on outside things means putting ourselves in a constant state of slavery.

Happiness depends on oneself

We must understand that we are not going to be happier by having more victories, more money, power, and recognition, given that happiness has nothing to do with ambition.

We must understand that we are not going to be happier by having greater pleasure sensations, as the search for pleasure through the body is also not what brings happiness.

All of these types of things create a superficial, shallow life. It represents the human being that is sleeping and who lives in the world of quantity.

It is essential to realize that happiness has more to do with the psychological than the physical. It requires an elevated state of consciousness, an encounter with oneself, an awakening to what is truly important.

We can obtain it if we learn to listen to ourselves, to fulfill our true needs, distancing ourselves from all that enslaves us and surrounds us in a cycle of permanent, unsatisfying desire.

Buddha Gautama says: “There is pleasure and there is bliss. Forgo the first to possess the second.”