Hello, thank you for taking the time to see my article. It’s lovely to have you here, let’s get started!
I often wonder if there is any exact way to define Happiness, what is its nature, is it internal/external. We all have different understanding of this term based on the meaning that we might attach to it. Happiness is also considered as a crucial aspect to assess how content and satisfied we are with our lives. This might be true that our happiness might change from time to time subjectively and the way we view happiness might also evolve over a period of time. Hence, I thought to delve a bit deeper into what all aspects contribute towards building happiness holistically.
I have observed many people mentioning that Happiness is an inner trait and is mostly determined by our current state of mind. However, this also makes me wonder if I am happy within, can the external environment still influence the happiness? In my opinion, there could be various external factors such as the people around us, home environment, the natural habitat, our present scenario, any challenge that we might be facing, our school/college/workplace. Similarly, there are also some internal factors such as our self-esteem, self-image, self-awareness, what are the things that we view as achievements, our progress on any goal/ target that we might have for ourselves. I believe there is certainly some kind of linkage between our internal happiness as well as the external environment. Happiness is quite comprehensive in nature since we are co-existing with our natural environment, Happiness will also somewhere coincide with our inner-self as well as the external environment. The degree of this linkage is very subjective and will most probably vary for everyone based on their personalized life experiences.
I believe many of us try to control some of these factors (internal/external) to the best of our capacity. We also might try to be happy in all the challenges being faced but the degree of motivation for this might not be the same each day. Our thought process on a day-to-day basis is very subjective and how we may choose to view our life on a particular day is very different from how it might be viewed on other day/s. Since motivation is different each day, our emotions are also very diverse. For example-we might feel very motivated and positive internally (inner happiness) on a specific day before going out (interaction with external environment) and when we are back, our degree of motivation can vary based on the kind of external interaction we have had. Our motivation can either be more/less and can certainly impact the happiness by at least some degree. Hence, the important thing becomes to gradually develop self-awareness regarding the same.
We should always try and give our thoughts some space so that they positively channelize and help us to increase our motivation. At the same time, we should also not force ourselves to be happy if we don’t feel like it on a particular day. The important thing here is to give space to ourselves while trying to keep the motivation intact. This will help us to accelerate the healing that we might require at the moment. At this step, we could follow various ways that might help us to positively motivate ourselves. Once we are motivated, we can take the time to come back to the state of happiness.
I think how we perceive happiness also depends on how do we feel about it. It cannot be determined by our state of mind on any one single day. I also think that people can attach different weightage to the inner quotient and a different importance to the external factor. This can also be governed by the things that motivate us on a daily basis and our conditioning around the same. Hence, we can focus on creating a list of things that help in building our motivation regularly and then try to segregate them into 2 buckets-internal motivators and external motivators. Through this practice, we can increase our own awareness on identifying as to which motivator out of the given list helps us to build our happiness the most. I believe being motivated is a very crucial aspect of the entire happiness journey and working around our best identified motivators could significantly assist in the overall happiness. Happiness is a gradual aspect and it can be tried to be built by consistency. We can also create a weekly activity for ourselves based on the best set of identified motivators that work for us. Through this, we can keep a weekly check on how much time is being allocated to it and how much more time is needed to boost it further.
Thank you so much for your time. I will catch up soon and, in the meantime, wishing you a very pleasant day ahead!
Comments