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Simplify Life for Happiness and Success
Why simplify life, and not enjoy its various colors with all intensity? Can we have happiness through those various colors that life offers? Life has many colors – good and bad, joyous and sad, lucky and mundane, successful and fatal, fortunate and unmemorable, happening and usual. And every color of life whether it’s beneficial to us or not, in our journey through life, we go through all of them in some measure. In a way we are explorers in this great adventure of life, and we explore various people, situations, and things at some point of time. Sometimes, these come to us unannounced, sometimes, we drive ourselves into such people or situations or things.
The Constant Search for Happiness
Our life is driven by the constant search for happiness. When we are faced with a challenging situation or if in our mind, when we are overpowered by our emotions, we get into a mental disequilibrium. The return to equilibrium of happiness is reached through a series of expressions of our emotions, behavior and actions. Isn’t it strange that while the state of disequilibrium is inside us, we keep responding to things outside to bring ourselves to the state of equilibrium.
In this search for happiness, over our different stages in life, we tend to collect many things – tangible and intangible. And over a period of time, many of them tends to overpower us with negative consequences.
People, Things, Memories : Searching for a Life of Fulfilment
(a) We come in contact with people, and it’s a long journey from acquaintance, we become friends. However, there is often a life cycle of such relations. When interests are no longer being served, people who were once friendly become distant over time, some may even become hostile. From bae to blocked is just a tap away.
(b) The search for happiness makes us spend money and buy things, similarly anxiety makes us spend money and buy things. Many of such things are unnecessary for us, but it is just to satisfy our urges and calm our minds that we keep on collecting unnecessary things that are not only waste of money but also are not useful. Besides, things that are useful at one point of time, it’s not necessary that they remain useful over long term.
Things that we posses lose their utility, and linger with us taking our physical spaces. In Commerce, it’s called, the ‘cost of holding,’ but in personal spaces, we don’t consider this ‘cost of holding,’ some even consider such things part of memory and recollection. Of-course, some of the things may have great memorable value, but everything can’t be valued on the same pedestal. If we are valuing all our possessions at the same pedestal, then we are not discerning enough.
(c) The same thing can also be said about our memories and past events that remain etched in our minds, and we remain in conversation with those people and events in our mind long after those situations have passed us. In a way in keeping such conversation alive, we are filling our mind with unnecessary trash, generating huge amount of unneeded temp files in our brain that not only clogs our brain but also reduces its processing power. By indulging in such mental remembrances, we make our brain suboptimal in dealing with the present challenges.
Mindfulness : Life is one event – and each moment is precious.
As each moment of life is precious, we should give greatest importance to our present moment. We need to focus on one thing only in our present moment. Mindfulness is letting go of our past and future, it is living in a state that is beyond remorse of the past or anxiety for the future. It helps to keep our mind calm. Calmness means not being overpowered with strong feelings or emotions related to the past or for the future.
When we won’t be perturbed by strong feelings or emotions which often emerge as a reaction to something external, we will have an internal happiness, and the mind won’t get clogged. We can then work to solve the challenges of the present with the full brain power.
Success Inspires
Success makes life a happier one. Success inspires us and the people around us, and makes us work more. Work that is result oriented is more productive, than work that has no tangible objective. Work that can be measurable, gives better results, and the result of success give happiness.
Luck favors the one who tries. Happiness is meaningful, when one has done the thing rather than renounced the world before doing or trying.
Success happens when our desires, intentions, thoughts, and actions align. Success is manifestation of our happiness. The common mortals are not born with silver spoon, but work hard to achieve success and results – it is for those who find happiness in work, family, kids, and have positive attitude about their life and future.
This is possible when we live and work in the present, and remove people, things, and memories from our lives that are no longer harmonious to the energies that we have embraced. Our energies determine who we are. By energy, I mean the thoughts, outlook, and attitudes that we reflect; the goals and aims that we wish to fulfil; the future that we wish to manifest.
Clinging on to people, things, and memories for the sake of past happiness is self harming. It’s like, just because once upon a time you loved to munch chalks as a kid that you still continue to do that – it only leads to disaster.
Being happy also means joy for each moment, enjoyment of life – at each of its twists and turns – and to think of solutions – deal with the issues, and conclude successfully.
We are what Our Thoughts Are
As humans we tend to think a lot. We think of various circumstances of future and past – whether they happened or not. Whether our past actions were correct, or what if we had decided differently. And for future, we again think, of various scenarios as to what should be our course of action -what if, else what…and so on.
All these get even more complicated as we have to contend with the responses of our near and dear ones, family and peers and friends. We sometimes do not do things that we want to do under their undue influence – which may not always be in our best interest. In this we have to be careful that we don’t wither away our competencies and core values, and our innate good qualities just because it is in conflict with someone else’s values or they don’t like them.
We should keep our good qualities with ourselves, because it’s by the good qualities that we define ourselves and that gives us self-respect. A person who has self-respect is not bothered by the opinion of others.
A Life of Fulfilment When We Simplify Our Life
If we have to live a life of fulfilment, then we have to unshackle ourselves, our thoughts from these various options and bonding. In fact, we need to exercise our option to be free from limiting and self deprecating behavior influenced by external situations- and live in the present moment with simple thinking and simple living.
And here when I say simple thinking, it has to do with personal life along with the professional work – where the work has become complex with inputs of technology and legal procedures. But the more adept one gets at work, the things that seem to be complex become simple!
Simple thinking and simple living at personal level is the most productive way to keep oneself in a sense of peaceful alertness. Being aware of ones existence, and being able to decide freely without pressure is one of the greatest joys of life. Simplifying our life makes it a livable and enjoyable experience. And this also has a positive effect on ones professional life – where one becomes more effective.
Conclusion
The focus of simplification have in its core – a proper control over mind and thought. It is a well said adage – if one has conquered one’s mind, he has conquered the world. While the word ‘conquer’ may be pretty heavy – the point is simple – the process of simplification has to start with oneself – and by doing that one can have a natural sense of engagement with ones life and life’s purpose.
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