Key to Happiness! Or?

What is it to live a meaningful life? Achieving something great? Earning a salary of six figures? Running your own successful business? Doing something worthwhile for society? All these might be the right answers, but what is it that runs behind the scenes? Happiness? Would it be considered worthy if you lead a happy life? 

The human species have always been in search of something that makes them happy. It is a biological reward system tuned in to the system that gives us pleasure. Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins are termed to be happy hormones. Whatever we end up doing, ultimately is to have a burst of these hormones in our system. The body doesn't really comprehend achievements, wealth, fame, love, etc. It only rewards us with a sudden rush of hormones that makes us feel good. After a while, the promotion you got at your job, the trophy you won at a sports event, marrying the love of your life, just don't end up in eternal happiness. Happiness is always a momentary feeling. 

Image Credits: Roney Mathew

So why do we keep looking for happiness all around? Why not just invest in the big pharma to keep us induced with drugs that enable the body to secrete these hormones forever? It would end most of the psychological traumas that many people go through. We even have a happiness index that rates the countries around the world (Finland being the happiest country for 3 consecutive years [1]). Why is it so important that happiness is being considered as an additional criterion to rank the countries apart from economic growth, population, and so on?

Throughout the day, we encounter a multitude of feelings. Rather than aiming for a momentary burst of "happy hormones", we can try to find and train our body to reward us for really small things comparatively. You had a tasty meal, try to feel happy about it. You helped a colleague at work to solve a problem, feel a sense of achievement. You finished reading a book or completed a project at school, have a sense of completeness. Monks get trained to let go of worldly pleasures, it doesn't mean they don't feel any emotions. They train their own reward system in the body. Following the same steps would be a really hard task to achieve, I personally could never do it. But at least I tend to feel happy about the little things. Trying to train my own reward system to keep me doped with the happy hormones. When I order something, I eagerly keep checking its status and makes me feel happy about it. Writing this blog makes me feel happy. If I look at an aircraft in the middle of the day, I feel delighted. 

What many of us take for granted, is somebody else's true meaning of happiness.

We tend to wait for the rewards of our actions to come from external sources. Waiting for that real sense of happiness might lead to an even greater sense of aloofness if our expectations aren't met. The aim of this post is to make people look at the small bursts of happiness every day rather than waiting for a big moment that would fade away as quickly as it comes by.

-Sushant Thotakura

-Image Credits: Roney Mathew | https://www.instagram.com/ronn.e/