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the happynesswalaᵀᴹ – "Inspiring 'Happyness'"ᵀᴹ! Sharing Life Lessons from Lived Experiences! Inspired Speaker, Life Coach and Author of "Fall Like A Rose Petal"!

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Why cook under pressure when you can be free?

When you simply are, you are happy!  

Nona Walia asks a very important question in The Times of India yesterday: “Is the pressure to be happy making us sad?” She’s asking her question in the context of her article on how there is a fatigue around the Self Help industry. But I wish to examine the question for what it simply is.

To understand happiness, let us first understand sadness. You are sad when you don’t get what you want or when what you don’t want arrives in your Life. Sadness cannot be avoided. And you must not even try to run away from it. You can’t escape it. When sadness arrives, hold it, examine it, feel it. Ask yourself how you are feeling when you are sad. Ask yourself if your sadness is serving any purpose? When you answer these two questions, in your own way, you will discover that sadness is a debilitating, wasteful emotion. Then you will be compelled to let go of it, to drop it.

When you let go of sadness, you can only be happy.

Now, let us understand happiness. To do that, we must understand Life. What comes between you and your living your Life fully – for what it is – are your expectations. You expect that your Life must be this way or that way. But Life has a mind of its own. It happens no matter what you want or how you are feeling. So, when you understand the futility of expectations, you will drop them too. It is only your expectations that bring you agony, that cause your suffering.

Drop your expectations and you will be free, you will be happy.

AVIS-Viswanathan-When-there-is-no-pressure-you-are-happy

Now, going back to Nona’s question, “Is the pressure to be happy making us sad?” – yes, absolutely! But, why allow a pressure to build up in the first place. Who do you have to prove anything to by being either happy or sad? If you like to be sad, if you like that dragging, melancholic, heavy, Guru Dutt-Meena Kumari-like feeling, keep holding on to it. If like to be happy, be happy. Where’s the pressure? I guess the pressure comes, when people know they can be happy but avoid being happy because they think that being happy is a selfish act – how can I be happy when everyone else around me is struggling, is sad or is suffering?

Which is why it is critical you understand happiness and define it appropriately.

To me, happiness is being non-worrying, non-frustrated and non-suffering. Non-worrying, because I understand the futility of worrying, so I don’t hold on to any worries, I watch them rise and ebb away. Non-frustrated, because I know I don’t and I can’t control the outcomes of my actions. So, I stay focused on only the actions, and accept, humbly without resisting, whatever results come my way. And non-suffering, because I don’t have any expectations from anyone or anything – I just take it as it comes. The key operative word in my definition of happiness is being – be happy being who you are, with what is! When you are just being, when you simply are, there is no pressure to become something. When there is no pressure – nothing to prove, nothing to claim, nothing to protect, nothing to escape, nothing to cling on to – you are happy!

Author AVIS ViswanathanPosted on April 17, 2017Categories Happiness, Inner Peace, Intelligent Living, Life, Spirituality, UncategorizedTags Art of Living, AVIS Viswanathan, Expectations, Expectations bring Agony, Fall Like A Rose Petal, Guru Dutt, Happiness, Inner Peace, Intelligent Living, Just Being, Life, Meena Kumari, Non-frustrated, Non-Suffering, Non-worrying, Nona Walia, Pain, Sadness, Spirituality, Suffering, Times of India, Uncategorized, Unhappiness, VaaniLeave a comment on Why cook under pressure when you can be free?
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1. The author, AVIS, shares Life lessons here that he has gleaned from his lived experiences. AVIS has nothing against or for any religion. If the reader has a learning to share, they are most welcome. If the reader makes a communal or inflammatory or derogatory comment, or presents a view which may affect the sentiments of other followers/readers, then this Blog’s administrators may have to regrettably delete such a comment and even block such a follower. 2. The lived experiences shared here and the learnings gleaned from them are unique and personal to AVIS. The copyright for all original content here, that has been written/created by AVIS, belongs to AVIS Viswanathan. Important, AVIS has no interest in either infringing upon or claiming copyright of any referenced material published on this Blog. The images/videos used on this Blog, that are not created by AVIS, are purely for illustrative purposes. They belong to their original owners/creators. The author does not intend profiting from them nor is there any covert claim to copyright any of them.

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