In the pursuit of happiness (part 2)

Happiness is such an overloaded word, I’m not even sure what it means. For me these days, happiness is more about peace than it is about joy.

I think we all live in a constant - pervasive state of anxiety that slowly corrodes inner peace. If you pay attention to yourself, you might notice a pattern where you're constantly running from one action to the other while your mind is on a constant chatter mode. It keeps talking endlessly, telling you lots of lies.

The lies are not big enough to come to your notice, but it compounds over time. It makes you unable to sit still- there's always this sense of what should i do next, where should i go next. It's always about the next thing and not this moment.

This is obvious if you ever just sit down and do nothing. Without action, running thoughts of what am I going to do next, even without listening to music or reading a book. It's difficult, because there's that pervasive anxiety that makes you get up and run.

It's important to just be aware of this deep seated anxiety that renders it difficult to become happy. This anxiety is merely a series of running thoughts. Rumination of the past regrets or the future plans.
Instead, ask yourself- do I want to think this, or do I want to keep peace?

If you stop talking to yourself for even ten minutes, if you stop obsessing over your own story, you’ll realize we are really far up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and life is pretty good.

(Happiness=peace) remove things/thoughts/people that make it difficult to have peace, build habits/thoughts/relationships that help you create peace and there you go- your personal happiness recipe. :D

#happiness #travel #musings