If you decide to be happy then only you can happy. If you decide to be pleased then only you can be pleased. You are going to a movie, why, to enjoy and to relax, because you think you can relax while watching a movie. Now just imagine, you bump into a person you just do not want to be with during the movie, and some how you just want to escape but unable to do so. All the time your mind is diverted towards that person not the movie and you are unable to enjoy the movie for which you had come. This movie is same, theater is same, but you are not happy any longer, why because earlier you had decided that you will be happy in the movie and you were but later on you decided not to be happy in the presence of a person whom you do not like, so you are not happy. So being happy depended on you not on anything else. You chose to be happy so you were. There are so many examples where we choose to be happy and then we feel we are happy. You had always wanted to go on a holiday to Europe with your wife and you got a free jackpot, where the prize offered you a free trip to Europe for two. You are so excited, you come home, pack your bags and board the flight along with your wife. Nothing can match this excitement. When you are there, you get to know, that the long due promotion has been awarded to one of your team mate as you were not there when the task was culminated. You want to come back as soon as possible and nothing in Europe is attracting you. Come on, wasn’t it your dream trip? Wasn’t this you had always wanted? So what made you so repulsive? So wasn’t it you chose to be happy or not? However, instead of developing negative feelings towards the other person in first example and concentrating on the trip instead of back home promotion in the later one, you could have chosen to be happy. So who decides to be happy, it is you, no one else can make you happy other than yourself.
You are responsible for your happiness.
No one else in this world can make you happy. If your happiness depends on others or things outside your self, it can never survive. Okay so let’s take things one by one, which can make you happy or happier. You are happy when your wife does what you like, when your kids do what you want them to do? What if they do not do that as they want something else and that makes them happy not what you want from them? So you are unhappy now? Yes because your happiness was dependent on others not yourself. Now take an example your happiness depends on yourself not on anyone else. You feel happy when you are doing your work, it may be you are writing or you are reading or it could be anything. You would be happy because you are doing it. It does not matter now if someone else is doing your work or not, you will always be happy as your happiness depends on you not on anyone else. As you do not expect your happiness to depend on your wife or kid, even if they do not do what you want them to do, you still will be happy as your happiness depends on you not them following you. Recently, my whole family was invited to my granny’s place for some occasion. Everyone went except me, which had upset my mom so much. I was happy being alone as I got time to be alone, to think over what next I should be writing in book. However, my mom was upset as her happiness was dependent on me going there and others opinion about my absence or presence. I was happy as my happiness dependent on me only. And if she also would have kept it to herself, that does not matter what others are thinking or whether others are going or not, she is happy as she is going, she could have actually been happy. If you really want to be happy which everyone wants to be, you need to shift your locus of control to yourself not to external world. Then only you can be elated.
