Happiness is that state of well-being, which has different degrees of peace, joy, ecstasy, in which everything is positive and nothing can cause suffering. You have certainly experienced such moments in your life, it is enough to live one and never forget it. A gorgeous sunset, hugging the long-awaited baby, the starry sky on a clear summer night, such experiences can trigger moments of happiness. Extending the moments of happiness, we develop the ability to live them whenever we want, in different situations, and we become happier and happier.

What is not happiness

Happiness is not given by drugs, although they can bring moments of happiness, as I described above. This is about all drugs 🙂 , including those considered mild or harmless: alcohol, tobacco, sugar, even a lot of very tasty food, etc. After any drug administration, there is a compensation period, in which you live in unhappiness. Drugs give certain chemical substances to the body stimulating good moods, but the body compensates to maintain the initial state and learns that it no longer has to work to produce those substances. Thus, when the external intake is stopped, the amount of stimuli will be less than usual, causing discomfort. You will thus feel an increasing need for the drug, in a negative spiral, until despair.

Happiness is not a prize, a singular climax surrounded by unhappiness. I mean, it doesn't make sense to be happy just 5 minutes while you are on the top of the mountain if you suffered 2 days on the way up and 2 days on the way down. I am not referring here to physical suffering, but to emotional suffering. If you suffer for years to reach someone, somewhere, the best chances are that you will discover that once you get there you are not as happy as you imagined, and in no case does it compensate for what happened until then.

What is happiness?

Although people have different perceptions of happiness, each of us clearly recognizes the moments when he is happy. He feels that "something" special is happening and retains that feeling. The pragmatic approach suggests that we act by multiplying and extending the duration of the moments in which we are happy, in a conscious, intentional, trained way.

If we now oscillate between different degrees of unhappiness, rare states of joy, and ephemeral moments of happiness and peace, after which we remain nostalgic, we can make the situations in which negative emotions predominate reduce in number and decrease in intensity, while those in which positive emotions predominate multiply and become more and more powerful. Thus we live more and more in a deep state of peace and joy, rarely interrupted otherwise by emotions that quickly disappear or diminish, anyway they no longer affect us, our state is now the result of our intention and not the other way around: we decide how we want to be in every moment of life, we are not governed by different less positive states. And in this case, why would we want to be anything other than happy?

I describe below some of the states of happiness that I have felt, hoping that you will resonate with some of them and that you will recognize from your own experience what the happiness I am referring to is. Then imagine how your life would look like if that state were the rule, not the exception. You can get there, more precisely, we all will get there sometime, it depends on us whether sooner or later. Train yourself to be happy, it's definitely the most valuable thing in your life, it's really your life lived in the most beautiful way 🙂

When we are happy, examples:

• When we are absorbed by the beauty, by the miracle around us ("awe state"): ex: When I look at a magnificent sunset, without comparing it to others from the past or wishing it was a little different 🙂 . My mind stays still and I just enjoy the show
• When we look at our children sometimes, usually when they are sleeping, and we are flooded with a love that we didn't even know we were capable of. We feel them as a part of us and as angels at the same time. What we know we are is not even there anymore: only the love we transformed into and that wonderful soul, as if from another world.
• In the protective arms of my parents, when I feel that nothing bad can happen to me, that whatever I do I will be loved.
• When I wake up in the morning with a zest for life, just waiting to start my day and have beautiful experiences. As if a continuous blessing hovers over me and I know that everything will be fine.
• When I see that I helped someone to be better, to feel peace, joy, happiness. As if happiness were everywhere, between us and in us, and we would be united in the same gorgeous state.
• When I create, when I am absorbed in my activity and I see that something useful, beautiful, or interesting has come out of my hands 🙂 . I feel that I have given the world something from my soul and thus my soul is filled in its turn.
• When I meditate / pray with sincerity and love and something, the Universe / Life / God / Tao / Christ, responds by enveloping me in a greater and deeper love than anything else existing or imagined