Happiness-Part 2

In my previous posting,I talked about worries,fears and other negative thoughts which makes us unhappy.This morning, I came across a nice quote by a person name Shantideva.It goes like this ""If you can solve your problem, then what is the need of worrying? If you cannot solve it, then what is the use of worrying?"
Happiness is a state of mind.It is nothing technical and it is not a skill that need to be acquired.Happiness does not always depend on external factors,it is governed by our mental attitude.Happiness,infact is a decision.There are some people who are always happy and positive in life,despite facing certain unfavourable situations and limitations.They dont depend on others to be happy and they focus on what they have and they strive to do better,instead of blaming life is unfair to them.
Some people think that they will only be happy if they are rich,own a big house and a nice car.Some even think that they will be happy if they were to be like someone else.They compare themselves with others and they feel inferior about themselves.It is a grave mistake if we compare ourselves with others.It is better to compare where we are now and what we are capable of becoming and set reasonable life goals so that we can work towards a better life for ourselves.
People often relate success to financial achievement.They always think that the rich and famous are alway successful but they do not realize that these people do have their own problems.We have always read news about the rich and famous committed suicide, sufferring from diseases and having family and marriage breakdown.Success is not defined by how rich or how famous we are.These people may be financially successful but they lead an unbalance life.They do not have inner peace, what they are lacking are balance and harmony in life, between the body,mind and the soul.
To be happy in life we must have something to live for, having a purpose in life.Happiness is an emotion and we feel happy when we accomplished something.It is a form of reward for having set our goals and then getting what we want.As mentioned earlier,what we should strive for is balance and harmony in life.Besides financial goals,we should also not neglect other areas like mental,health,family, social and spiritual goals.By setting these goals,we have have a clearer direction  which will take us on a journey to attain "success" as defined by attaining the balance and harmony in life.We must set goals based on reasonable expectations and they need not be complicated goals for a start.
Some examples are as follows:

Mental goals: Reading motivational books, attending seminars or self improvement courses.
Health goals: Exercise program,diet and nutrition control.
Emotional goals: Anger management, develop courage, becoming more understanding.
Financial goals: Improve income,saving and investment.
Family goals: Quality time with family members
Social goals: Meeting long lost friends,knows other better,meeting people we like .

Setting these goal will be meaningless if we dont plan them properly and act on them with certain timeline.However, it is inevitable that we will always face problems in whatever goals we want to achieve.Being happy doesn't mean that we have no problems in life but to have mental strengths to focus on solutions to our problems.We might be worry about failures or not not able to achieve what we want in life, but we can take comfort that every steps and actions that we take we are actually moving closer to what we want.Failure is nothing but a sign that tell us that there is a better way of doing things.Soichiro Honda said this:

"MANY PEOPLE DREAM OF SUCCESS.TO ME,SUCCESS CAN BE ACHIEVED ONLY THROUGH REPEATED FAILURE AND INTROSPECTION.INFACT,SUCCESS REPRESENTS THE 1 PERCENT OF YOUR WORK THAT RESULTS FROM 99 PERCENT THAT IS CALLED FAILURE"

I will continue on my next posting.