The Pathway to Happiness

Something that we have all spent time thinking about is our personal pathway to happiness. We ponder what makes us feel good and exactly how we can get to a stage in life where we will be fully happy. Happy enough to leave this world content that we have had a good life, achieved what we wanted to, experienced , what we wanted to and learned what we believe is necessary. But how many of us are actually on a pathway to happiness ? How many of us are actually happy ? Recent surveys suggest that more than 70% of the worlds population consider themselves to be not fully happy with themselves and their lives. In this article I am going to discuss why I feel there is so much unhappiness in the world today and how you can become truly happy.

Lets start by looking at what makes people happy. This seems to vary from country to country and culture to culture. For the UK and US very high on the list of what makes people happy is personal success and freedom of expression. For Japan and China fulfilling the expectations of ones family is very high. These three keys to happiness can be broken down into many different area of life. For the majority of people across the world to feel truly happy they need to feel good about their appearance to the world, have lived up to what there family expects of them, to have a family of there own with all the members being happy and healthy, to be financially secure, to have achieved what they want to out of their career if they have one, feel they have a purpose in life, be in what they consider is good health, to have acquired the possessions in life they have always wanted to have and they must believe they have a future of some sorts.

Having read through that small list you will find given some thought that all of them are very hard to have during certain parts of your life. Lets examine them further

For the majority of people across the world to feel truly happy they need to feel good about their appearance to the world

We all get old and our bodies just don’t look like they did when we are in our prime. Many people out there struggle with truly being happy with how they appear to the world after they turn forty. Loads of people struggle before that. With society today pushing in our faces to look this way, be super slim and fit into this box or that one. Children and adults alike find it hard to live up to these glamorised expectations. Many people suffer with some sort of illness that stops them from being happy with their appearance to the world. Like a speech impediment etc. This places people outside the considered norm of society. A natural human urge is a want to be excepted. The human ego wants to feel that everybody “excepts me and thinks I look fabulous“. The ego thinks if I do not look fabulous and in the norm, people will reject me and I will be less loved and have a harder life. The ego believes “if I look like those people who appear to the world better than I do, those people that appear to be happy and perfect, I will be happy too“. The problem is in life for many reasons some of which I have highlighted we cant all appear to the world in the way we would like to.

Lived up to what there family expects of them

Many families out there plaster the other members of their unit with unrealistic expectations. Expectations to make so much money, to be of a certain importance in society, to be a particular sort of person, to have a particular sort of career etc. Often these expectations can be placed on someone before they even come into this world. This happens because the human ego wants each member of their unit to be the way they want to them to be for there own selfish means. The ego feels that each person in the family can reflect on all the other members. Again the ego makes a person want to seem perfect and be excepted. This can be so to the extent it makes people put expectations on a person other than themselves. Expectations can also be put on a person for a number of physiological reasons. Many people will simply never be able to live up to these expectations as they are their own person and even when a person does want to fulfil the expectations placed on them, often life can get in the way of them doing so.
have a family of their own with all the members being happy and healthy

Firstly, many people will be all to well aware how difficult it can be to have a family in the first place. Medically it may be hard for a person to have a family. However when one does have a family to keep that family together, happy and healthy all the time is a near impossible task. This is all about needing to feel loved and excepted again. It is also in part a biological urge to have a family and keep them well so that your genes survive which is something again governed by the ego. Its hard enough to keep yourself happy and healthy let alone however many others. At least with this is shows a more loving and caring side to us because the reason we want them to be happy and healthy is because we care about them. However it is not good for us to place our own happiness on the state of another.

Be financially secure

Need I say how many people struggle with this aspect. In a persons life, its likely they will struggle at some point financially. Most often when they are a young adult. Why do we need to feel financially secure. It all about feeling that we can survive and have a future something again governed by the ego. Some people believe that the more money you have they happier they will be but surveys show the old saying that money cant but you happiness is true. In fact countries that have less of it seem to my happy that the countries that have more money.

Have achieved what they want to out of their career if they have one

Unless their goal is to help more people through their career or to gain a certain degree of comfort through the career, again it’s that little three letter word coming into play again, yep you got it the ego. The ego wants to feel important and better than everyone else in what a person is connected with. This goes back to the time when males and females would be in competition with each other in everything they did because it was all about who is the strongest and best male to have your children and who is the stronger and more perfect mother to have your children. Its also a case of the ego wanting attention so that it can feel excepted. With the current situation of unemployment and cut throat competition is it any wonder that many people don’t achieve what they would want to from there careers.

Feel they have a purpose in life

If one does not feel they have a purpose in life, the ego can get restless feeling you are not important. The ego as we have established makes us feel that we need to be important. Many people especially teenagers go through a time when things are not going well or they don’t see what’s ahead for themselves. Often this leads to them not knowing or realising what their purpose in life is or even what they want it to be. Many people even find themselves asking this question in later life.

Be in what they consider is good health

Not only can we not escape that pesky common cold that brings us down the bottom line again is we are all going to get old and be more prone to illness. Being in not so good health is something while in the physical body we just can’t escape from.

To have acquired the possessions in life they have always wanted to have

I have now lost count of the number of times I have used the word ego in this article my apologises but it keeps rearing its ugly head and I’m going to have to use it further. This is something the ego does to again feel important, the ego feels if I have more possessions then I am better than the person that does not have those possessions. Anything you can truly posses is often something that you truly don’t need. So when you want that fancy new car with all those lovely features remember the bit you need on the car is the engine not the heated seats……….. The heated seats is your ego coming out. However in the world today when all these wonderful things are pushed on you this MUST HAVE item and that MUST HAVE item. Is it any wonder that people find putting their ego to bed on material possessions a bit taxing.

Believing they have a future of some sorts

The ego which coincidently can be broken down into E. edging G. god O. out must feel that it has a future to be content. It needs to feel as I said before it can survive. Many people come to a point in life where they feel they don’t have much of a future if one at all. Another factor in this is death we don’t want to die because of our ego. It wants to feel it has a future and will survive. We are all going to die but surveys would show only around fifty to sixty five percent of the worlds population believe they will live on after death. So it could be said that it is essential to ones ultimate happiness to have made an effort to properly investigate the afterlife and mediumship. So one could come to the conclusion there has to be an afterlife through the proof that is out there and the proof that continues to grow.

This all seems to make for some very unhappy campers here on earth. So one may ask can I be happy ? The answer is YES but I believe it wont be found from the things I have spoken about above.

To find happiness a person must first move away from feeling and believing the things spoken of above bring happiness, as ultimately they don’t. Before I get onto saying what will bring happiness into a persons life let me mention what is stopping a person from achieving it.
 
There is one major thing in life that stop a person from achieving happiness which is the ego.

To be happy one must sink their ego and stop letting it rule their life. Which it does is so many ways that have not been spoken of in this article as well as the ones that have. If a person lives in the now more and takes life in on a deeper level and stops thinking about themselves, the I, the self and starts thinking about others they will begin to destroy their ego. Its about being conscious of when the ego is effecting your actions and how you are feeling, its about being in touch with your more inner emotions and feelings that are of a non physical nature. Moving away from material things is a big help and realising what you have but don’t need and doing away with some of those things, in time perhaps all of them. Will also help greatly.

Then we move onto to what the ego is influencing which is the key to happiness. Perception, the knowledge that true happiness come from within not from without. It is fact how we see the world reflects back on us. If we see the world as being bad we will only see bad in the world. Where as if we see the world as full of good things we will notice and see those good things more so than the bad. If our perception is that I can not be happy without having this or that then we wont have happiness. However, if we believe that even if I don’t have that watch then I will be happy and the world is good then you will be happy. If you are in bad health and believe that because you are ill you wont get any enjoyment out of life then quite simply wont. If you believe yes you are ill but the world is wonderful and I can still get so much enjoyment out of it, you will find that enjoyment in the world. Its about having a positive outlook and seeing the good instead of the bad. This runs so deep it effects us on a biological level and I shall explain how.

If you put two people on a roller coaster seated next to each other, the one seated on the left loves to go fast, the person seated on the right doesn’t in fact it scares them. The one seated on the left has no problem with heights the person seated on the right does in fact it also scares them. The person on the left believes that he can go upside down as many times as he likes and it wont make him feel sick, the person on the right believes that it will make him sick if he goes upside down. After they get off that rollercoaster the person on the left experienced joy and pleasure on the ride and has released certain endorphins and chemicals in the body. The person sat on the right experienced fear and panic, feels sick and has released different endorphins and chemicals in the body. It was the same ride but they had very different experiences due to their perception of the event. This is just the same for the long ride of physical life. A recent experiment showed that ageing is also something in the mind and strongly connected to perception and in turn happiness. The experiment involved taking a group of elderly people and putting them into an isolated area where everything looked, sounded and was from 30 years ago. The experiments showed that, if we took their minds back 30 years, in some cases the participants seemed to shed 20 years off their biological age. Memory, mood, flexibility, stamina and even eye sight improved in almost all of the participants.

Perception is also the reason for the well known Monday blues and winter woes that effect so many. But things don’t have to be so bad. I believe that with letting go of our ego and by changing the way we think and thus in turn the way we feel. Leading to bringing that happiness out from within instead of searching for it externally. Combined with making sure that we are living life to the fullest through that perception and not leaving things undone or unsaid, can lead to us being consistently fully happy in our lives.

A simple way to tell if you are living your life to the fullest through that good perception and not leaving things undone or unsaid is to read through the lyrics of the song below, think on them then see if you would do things differently and if the answer to the questions are a yes or a no.

“If today was your last day and tomorrow was too late
Could you say goodbye to yesterday?
Would you live each moment like your last?
Leave old pictures in the past?
Donate every dime you had ?
And would you call those friends you never see?
Reminisce old memories?
Would you forgive your enemies?
And would you be better to the ones you love?
Swear up and down to god above
That you’ll finally be happy
Finally content with love ?
Say those things you never say ?
Give all your possessions away ?
If today was your last day
what would you say?”

So in conclusion happiness does come from within not from without. Even proof of the afterlife and the happiness that can bring comes through mediation which is going within or mental mediumship telepathic communication from within in the mediums mind or physical mediumship where the energy is often used from within the medium and people present. Lets not forget that the world that we see outwardly is of our own creation through our thoughts, a creative pattern known as the law of attraction. To sum up everything I have said in this article I am going to refer to something that Buddha who’s real name was Siddhārtha Gautama I prefer to call him Sid for short said well over a thousand years ago. “There is no pathway to happiness, happiness is the way” and I will leave you with that thought.

© Ross Bartlett 2011
www.teenpsychic.co.uk