It's not what is happening that is making us happy or unhappy. It is how we are responding to those things.
Simple, profound truths are the realm of this Buddhist nun. Her message? The gift of happiness truly lies within our own hearts and minds.
Key Takeaways
Three Simple Questions: Are you having a good day? Why? Tomorrow, would you rather have a good day or a bad day?
When things are going well, we feel happy. When things are going wrong, the happy feelings disappear. As long as our reasons for why we had a good day are external conditions, then we are not going to have that stable happiness we all want.
We cannot put our happiness in the hands other people and rely on things which we have no control over. If we want to be happy everyday, we have two things we need to do.
1. “stop outsourcing our happiness on the people and circumstances of life” We need to stop attributing our happiness to what’s going on externally, stop blaming others for our unhappiness. As long as we are doing this, our happiness will be unstable and illusive.
2. Cultivate a source of inner peace from inside our own mind “happiness and unhappiness are states of minds, therefore their real causes cannot be found outside the mind.”
- If we have a peaceful state of mind, we will be happy regardless of people and circumstances.
- If our mind is unpeaceful or agitated then even if we have very good circumstances, well find it impossible to be happy.
It’s not what is happening that is making us happy or unhappy. It is how we are responding to those things that or what our state of mind is like that determines our state of happiness.
How do we create a peaceful, positive state of mind? By meditating we can cultivate a peaceful, positive state of mind and bring that inner peace with us throughout the day to benefit ourselves and others.