Short Keys to Unlock Happiness

Happiness is not very expensive even in this era of social frustration. In most of the cases, we have to pay the cost of everything which we wish to bring in our acquisition. As they say, there is nothing like Free Lunch in this world. Similarly, Happiness has a cost too. But this cost is not paid in cash or through your credit card. You might be thinking about your new house in a posh area or your luxurious car or branded clothes which you recently bought for yourself, for which you have paid a handsome amount and feel so much happy about this asset. Is the material acquisition of goods enough to make a person happy and satisfied? NO. If goods could make you happy; then the elite women would not have to fix appointments with a psychiatrist for their mental peace.

There is no specific formula for happiness or inner peace. However, I figured out some common cognitive attributes which may be helpful in releasing depression and accelerate positivity in your thoughts.

Value Yourself: The first very important point which leads towards happiness is to value yourself. Don’t think that you are worthless creature. Allah (s.w.t) has created every living being with a purpose and none of His creation is useless. Start analyzing yourself by pointing out your strengths and solution for your weaknesses. Think about your achievements and feel good about them. With a low level of self esteem; you should not expect to live a happy life.

Your are Not Here to Please Everybody: Most of the times we do things to make others happy: our bosses, management, husband, wife, friend etc. I’m not asking you to annoy them but at least stop killing yourself to meet their expectations. You are a Human who has his own life, likes and dislikes, dreams. You should do things which make you happy and of course which do not deviate from your code of ethics and moral standards. If an evening walk makes your mind fresh then go for it; don’t wait for a friend to accompany you. If you feel like having an ice cream; don’t beg your brother or husband to get it for yourself. Make a wish list and start following.

Ignore the phrase “Log Kia Kahengay” : Usually before doing something of our interest, the first phrase which strikes our mind or mom says is “Log Kia Kahengay” (what would people say). Just remember people are here to talk. They would comment or rather criticize even on your positive behavior. So just ignore them and judge your actions on your own parameters. You are intelligent enough to weigh the impact of your action on you and others. If something, according to you, is fine then its fine.

Worries about materialistic acquisition: Today, we live in a capitalist world where the purpose of living is to make as much money as we could in order to consume ‘Everything’ which others have. Being Muslims, its our faith to believe in the power of Almighty Allah. I heard a very deep thought sentence from a friend that “Naseeb se ziada aur waqt se pehlay kisi ko kuch nahi milta” (You cannot get more than your destiny and before time). It is not in our hands but to work hard with honestly, is surely within our reach. So we should play our part and leave rest to Him who plans better than us.

Praise people who deserve: Sharing happiness of others inculcates positivity in our thought and attitude. If your friend gets a position in exam; you must congratulate him on his success and share his happiness. Similarly, your colleague who gets a promotion deserves your honest wishes on his achievement. Be the part of your closed ones on the occasion of happiness and grief. This will make your heart kind and tender and you would start taking things positively.

Does Your Past Hurt?

"If you are carrying strong feelings about something that happened in your past, they may hinder your ability to live in the present." -- Les Brown

I totally agree with the view point of L. Brown regarding the worse effects of our past on the present. From the time, I became capable of developing my consciousness; I began being the proponent of the fact that what we do in our present would restore as the ‘memory’ in our brain (sometime in our unconscious) which would dominate our thinking and perception in future as the past. Precisely, what we do today or what happen to us remains in our consciousness for some time and after that thoughts of new incidents replace the memory; which would then probably restore in our unconsciousness as a past memory in future. And any event can trigger these restored bad memories.

I’m among those who have a very strong memory because of that; I forgive people but don’t forget incidents, experiences and words of others. I believe there are many people around me who have such attributes. One thing which you would also agree with is the fact that this kind of behavior is very painful for a person having high level of emotions and sensitivity.

People, who do not forget their memories, always live in the past and those memories keep hurting them throughout their life. Any person, behavior or incident which may relate to some bad memory, refreshes the scene of the past which may trigger depression. In such scenario the person overlook the countless blessing of Almighty and start complaining about life, world and people around him.

Barbara De Angelis said, "The more anger towards the past you carry in your heart, the less capable you are of loving in the present."

Sometimes it happens that the most pleasurable and pleasant experiences and incidents of past hurt us in future. We become sad when we miss those moments that we spent with our loved ones who could not get along with us for some reason. Such memories make us depress but along with this, there are some memories which make us annoyed. Barbara De Angelis refers to such memories that make us angry. In the result of which we start hating ourselves sometimes and mostly blame others. This hatred not only give pain to the person but also restrict him to enjoy other pleasant memories and positive current happenings.

Memories whether good or bad, are the part of past which has gone so I think blaming ourselves or others, making them responsible and burning ourselves in the fire of anger and hatred is worthless and useless; because such memories can’t give us anything except the pain and tears. And something which produce hindrance in the way of our happiness; the sane attitude is to throw it away and start loving yourself and your life for the sake of countless blessings that God has showered upon us. Life is beautiful; so don’t live it as a burden. We have got millions of reasons to be happy.. Can’t we just find one?

VAGUENESS - the unavoidable element in our ultimate perception of reality.

Upon resuming my office seat today; I start thinking for topics for today’s blog. The topic hunt ended with nothing in mind while hands were getting anxious to hit the keyboard keys. Then, I decided to write about ‘Nothing.’ Strange.. isn’t it? Yeah, because I got nothing in the result of my brain storming for the topic. Well, again, it’s a great difficultly. Nothing has a very vast horizon and having so many implications and dimensions. Somehow, I got blocked for innovative ideas, felt so empty.

Sometimes, upon putting much of the effort, we get nothing at the end. Here, I did not mean effort in some concrete work. Rather, I’m referring to the mental effort and energy that we put in thinking about something or discovering some reality. Although, we are able to understand some of the parts but a certain area remains vacuous. In my dictionary, this emptiness is known as ‘Vagueness.’ Every person has his own dictionary where he assigns certain meaning to certain words on the basis on his own choice or experience. Sometimes he borrows a meaning from other person’s dictionary and more often he disseminate his reference meanings to others, if he is a writer

My dictionary defines ‘Vagueness’ as, “The unavoidable element in our ultimate perception of reality.” Let’s expand the explanation.

There are two basic parts highlighted in the word’s explanation:

One, it is the unavoidable element – meaning we can not avoid or restrict it by any means. It will always be there with your perception of something (later referred as reality).

Two, in our ultimate perception of reality – This is somewhat complicated. Reality itself is very vague; it varies from individual to individual. So, just to understand the definition, let’s suppose ‘reality is absolute’, for a while. Perception of reality refers to image of reality in our minds. What’s real for us or to be more accurate, what we regard as real in our mind or our own insight about something which makes it the Truth for us.

Finally, the word ultimate refers to the final and decisive version. As most of us would agree, we form many opinions in our thought process, at the end of which, we reject all of our opinions and stick to the final opinion or decision.

I think this elusiveness that reflects from our thoughts and decisions actually lie inside us. All these grey-undefined areas actually represent the emptiness of our inner selves. Every time when we find some unaddressed or unprocessed idea; it implies that we are deficient and incapable of many things. Thus, this vagueness in our perceptions and thoughts actually refers to the foremost reality that we all are curtailed by nature and the humanistic capabilities are also restricted.

Consistency & Determination – yet another perspective

Sometimes, I get amazed if I think of a man, leading a static life. Here, the word static doesn’t refer to the reward less journey with no achievements. Rather, I wonder about the hidden secret behind leading a routine life. I don’t understand how a person could remain at the similar path for so many years and some times even many decades. Few may call it ‘consistency’ or in some way ‘determination.’ And if it is so, then no doubt it is a positive attribute of a personality. I don’t disagree with the idea of a consistent and determined life. For me consistency is not something which resists you in exploring new opportunities and a drive for the betterment. On contrary it is a hidden force behind you that keeps you moving and provides right direction according to your own requirement and desires.

Let’s examine a few cases. There is person A, who did some traditional degree, started his career from an executive, got some achievements followed by his promotions; years passed by and after 5-10 years he got some position, let say in management. In the same manner he spent his whole life; reaching office at 9, working, leaving at 6, coming back home, watching some television, having dinner and getting asleep. The most ironic part is that he never thought to try some new stuff, never explored new opportunities which his life would have brought forward. Rather he assumed that his life was meant in this way and didn’t have any other objective; something more meaningful, something more concrete.

On contrary, there is person B, who completed his education, had formed some provisional goal, and started his journey with so many confused and unsure desires. But after sometime, he realized that it was not something which he wanted from his life; his presence in this world is meant to have some other objective, something which was vague and indistinct at that moment but would get materialize in some understandable idea some day. In his endeavor of self exploration, he traveled so many miles aimlessly, put his hand into multiple fields but he was determined that one day, he would have a comprehensive and visible destination in front of him.

On the concluding note, I would like to say that if somebody is dedicated to taste different flavors of life and feel every existing color of this world, which enable him to explore all the opportunities that interest him then would he not be called consistent and dedicated in his aims? Or being an orthodox nation, we start blaming him with the charge of having a worthless and purposeless journey.

The Idea behind unspoken words !!

I’m very excited to have my blog here in front of me finally. I have been thinking to have a podium where I could express myself and as the name suggests; give platform to some unspoken words which were never expressed out due to one reason or the other. I think everybody has something ‘unspoken’ in his life. It may be in a form of undisclosed desire or some hidden need which requires an appropriate platform to get in front of people. But somehow such unspoken words and undisclosed feelings remain buried inside one’s heart. The reason for that misfortune could be enormous like unavailability of a suitable platform or lack of the audience for the communication of message. This audience plays a very significant role in our lives. Unintentionally and unnoticeably our actions and behaviour are followed and reshaped by the requirement of our audience. For instance, we do things which ‘that’ person likes and we avoid something which he or she doesn’t like. So if the audience i.e. listeners and readers are not available, we may not disclose our thoughts, opinion and emotions.

Yes, I know that I was talking about the urge to have an appropriate platform for some unspoken words. Most of the times, we don’t act according to our requirements because of some inevitable circumstances and immediate engagements. As I should have started blogging ages ago but I might have lacked that level of motivation that could push me towards this action. As they say, it’s never too late for a good deed, so I am here today. While developing the first write-up for the blog, I just remember my teacher who taught us the course of linguistics in my third year at varsity. He used to suggest us to start maintaining a daily diary where we can enlist the daily routine tasks and our opinions. And that we should read our previous writings after few months to analyze the difference in our perception about life as it forms and reforms day by day. I was convinced by his idea and decided to maintain a diary but as we know that we as a nation, lack motivation towards positive and productive things. Although I had made a firm decision to buy one nice diary and start writing but that lucky day never arrived in my life.

Today, that indolence and reluctance has transformed into an endeavour to have an online dairy i.e. a blog, where I can address my scattered thoughts to the unknown audience. I’m pretty much excited and have kept my fingers crossed for my future correspondence with the blog and readers. I really hope that these unspoken words and a journey of undisclosed thoughts keep having perseverance in future as well. So guys (if by chance, somebody has reached to this line) be ready for more broken and scattered opinions that are my unspoken words.