One of the goals of the current human being is the achievement of almost complete happiness, but we have to understand that happiness as an emotion cannot be felt constantly and the insatiable search for it often leads us to not be able to find it., feeling frustrated and even feeling that nothing we do will ever manage to give us this emotion constantly.
It is important to understand that happiness, like other emotions, is something we have at specific moments in our lives, and the path to achieve it often happens, as Jean Paul Sartre said, by wanting what we do, realizing the things achieved in our life and what surrounds us and feel in balance with all of it. To put it another way, if we always look closely at everything we have and only yearn for more (more money, more friends, a better job, a better house, a better car) we will never stop to enjoy and therefore happiness in the day. day by day it becomes impossible to achieve.
How to learn to be happy: set goals
- This does not mean that we do not have objectives, rather the contrary, another important thing for people’s lives is to have vital objectives, but we must learn to enjoy the path that leads us to achieve them, and once achieved, enjoy them. In a world where social norms often lead us to want more, the achievement of objectives becomes exclusively that, and once achieved, the almost obsessive need to achieve other things returns.
- This ends up causing a great feeling of frustration, of not achieving things or that if we do achieve them they are not enough and, therefore, happiness becomes elusive, not because it does not exist, but because we are not able to see it in what we are. that surrounds us
The other side of happiness
- We also have to understand that happiness has counterpoints in sadness or anger, and that we have to have these emotions because they also allow us to value the feeling of happiness much more. Many times we do the impossible to block out these more negative emotions because we don’t want them to be part of our lives. However, this is not good because the only thing it causes is that when we suffer from them, they become more harmful and painful.
- It is important to accept that we have to have good and bad moments, that each moment brings things to our lives and that, above all, they help us know how to differentiate between happiness and sadness in a healthy way.
Can you learn to be happy?
- Therefore, we have to learn to enjoy everything we have and have managed to achieve, set vital goals that we really want, enjoy the path to achieve them, see what things in our life do not bring us anything and we really do not want in it and see also what to do to change it. It is also important to try to see these things in moments of calm (never when we are either very happy or very sad) because only then can we make decisions that finally bring us that happiness.
- And, above all, knowing how to ask for help when we are not able to see what we have or when we cannot feel well. The human being is a social animal, we need to know that we have people by our side to lean on them, it is already something that will bring us a lot of peace and happiness, but we have to learn to communicate and listen to our emotions and pay attention to them.