SECRET OF HAPPINESS

“Let happiness be with you forever!!!” Does this sound like a boon given to you??? All of us would wish this boon to happen throughout our life. But the truth is that most of us stop only with wishing for it. We would have noticed that some people are always happy no matter whatever the situation is. Their presence would always enlighten the whole atmosphere wherever they are. We might name them as extroverts or optimists or lucky folks or cool heads. But, what so ever is the name, have we ever thought ‘how is that possible for them to be happy and light always when we are not able to do it?’ The answer is very simple. To be happy all you have to do is start living in the present by applying the below 5 thumb rules:

• Watching your thoughts – Eliminate worries about past and future
• Gratitude – Count your blessings and the favours you enjoy from others
• Hope – Positive attitude
• Choose to be happy – Irrespective of the situation
• Love – Yourself, what you do and all people around you

Our thoughts will lead our life. Mind does not know whether the thought is positive or negative nor it is programmed to execute only selected thoughts. In the current scenario, “Worry” has become a habit for most of us. We not only stop with worrying but also share them with others and make others also to worry. Even children are taught to worry as parents build their expectations and anxiousness on them. Almost every moment we either keep worrying about the spilt milk (past) or the eggs yet to be hatched (future). Worrying will result in stagnation of our thoughts and also accumulation of more and more forms of negative energy in us. Thus at any point of time it is very essential to cut out any negative thought when it starts peeping out itself.

When asked to count the number of happy moments experienced in a month, the number would normally be a distinct one digit for most of us. On the other hand, when asked to count the number of times we had been worrying about something, probably that would go on till infinity and for some it could also include the present moment. Most of the times any devastating loss through people/situations of the past will make us worry the most. Those are the times where we have to start counting the number of blessings we have in the present. We need to be grateful for even one good that we have achieved through the person or the event that we consider the loss from. “Past” is to be considered only as a reference in order to either learn or build confidence that we have already crossed it safe or to recollect the sweet memories and gain momentum in the present life. All we have to understand is that whatever happens to us that are not under our permissible condition is for our good and we will later understand why that had happened. The more you start noting the blessings you have and the more the gratitude you show to the people who help you and do some good for you in the past or in the day to day life, you are attracting more and more positive energy in your thoughts. Gratitude has immense power. Thank for you woke up well in the morning, thank that you have reached your workplace on time. Thank your friend for accompanying you for a coffee break; thank your mom/wife for having prepared a hearty food. Thank for each good experience you get. This will enhance your positive energy and give more and more happiness to you and people around you.

Once a man asked God” If everything is written in fate then why to pray or work towards what we want to achieve?” God smiled and said” Probably at many instances I would have just written ‘AS YOU WISH’ ”. Our “Future” exactly depends on what we think about and do now. Be it in terms of your career or relationship or health. There is a saying "First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do. The good happening will take care of itself." ~ Epictetus. Accepting the present situation and doing what we can do with all the hope that we will succeed will eliminate any uncertainty about the future and bring about whatever good is in store for us. Just note down what you really want to have and write down a gratitude note imagining that you have already achieved what you want and keep reading it or telling it in your mind whenever possible. Then continue doing what you have to do to achieve it and the miracle will happen absolutely because of your thought power and positive attitude. This will work for any small to big hope of yours be it in career or relationship or health.

Apart from the past and future situations, another challenge is the situation in the present. In our day to day life we come across many situations/people we consider unfavourable to us. Our happiness is mostly controlled or rather stolen through these so considered unfavourable situations/people. Any situation becomes unfavourable mostly because it does not match with our expectation. What we consider as unfavourable would sometimes be the most favourable for others. However most of these situations can be handled through the principle of “Why Not” and “acceptance”. Eg: Your friend might hate talking during work whereas you enjoy talking and working. So, whenever you talk to her during work, she insults you which make you feel bad. In this case being without talking is not going to affect you in anyway and you might well as enjoy your work through other means, then you can adopt the “why not” principle. Whenever there is no foreseen risks, the “why not” principle can be adopted that will bring about an out of the box solution. However the situation is, all we have to do is to stay calm for some time and believe that even the most complex situation would have a simple solution. This would invoke the power of acceptance in us and help in getting the most appropriate solution for that situation.

Above all, happiness is complete only with this key component of love added to whatever you do for yourself and to all people around you. Create a purpose that involves happiness of one another person at least apart from you, for whatever you are doing. This will help you carry out your job with utmost joy and your fullest capability. Love grows through smile and appreciation. To give love to yourself give yourself more and more experiences that would make you smile and start appreciating your efforts. Similarly, to grow your love to all people around you, you will have to give more and more smiling and appreciation experiences to them and which is why it is essential to love others the way they want to be loved. Seeing smiling faces around us will always kindle our inner strength and help experience happiness to the fullest.The more you keep smiling and appreciating, the more the love and happiness flows through you.

All of us are born with the freedom to be happy and all we have to do is to keep our happiness lit up always which in turn would light the happiness of others too.

FRAGRANCE OF LOVE

She lay on her bed as her thoughts flew back to her days love… the days, when she was filled with bliss and happiness. She reflected about that one soul which completely accepted her and showered all the love to her even when she was hostile at times. That soul loved to spare even all the time it had with her and kept admiring and appreciating her for every single step or even a simple notice she made. That soul was happy to see her smile and hear her laughter and readily gave the shoulders to her when she was gloomy or in tears. Every hug she got from that soul filled her with everlasting happiness. She always did the very best to please that soul and loved to be under the warmth of that soul always.
She had all the strength to face anything in her life for she knew that whenever she fell down, there would be a helping hand from that soul and she would again rise up to the air with all her strength regained back. Under the love of that soul she felt she was at her best and she started spreading her joy and happiness to all people around her too. She was beaming with sprits and realized that she had succeeded all the way from the place where she laid hopelessly till the day she was high up in the air on her own. And, that was the point she realised that she was completely in love with herself too. She loved herself and whatever she did absolutely. That love gave her all the joy, happiness, hope, strength, success and above all the eternal peace. She ran up to her mom and kissed her on her forehead- To the soul of patience, endurance and complete surrender. Love is pure and so are the effects of it.
Now, this loving soul could have played the role of a parent or child or spouse or valentine or friend or sibling or just any person or even all of them in each one’s life. But, it would have given the same miraculous feeling till the extent that the 2 laws of love had been abided to.
Law 1: Law of giving unconditionally
Law 2: Law of freedom without any intension of possession

Firstly, Love functions based on the “Law of giving unconditionally”. Till the moment love is given unconditionally without expecting anything in return, this love will work miracle on you and the soul you are in love. The perfect example for this is the mother’s love to her baby. However, if the mother starts to expect something in return as the baby grows up, is when the love starts fading away.
Secondly, love is meant to be free. No one can be compelled to love or perform anything for love. Love is true when there is mutual respect for the feelings of both the souls. Just like the flower in the garden, it spreads out the fragrance and you can keep getting mesmerised in it. However, the moment you try to possess the flower, you will have to see the flower fading off. In our real day to day scenario, we come across many instances of the so called “Love Failure”. This is a typical example where one soul tries to possess another soul. There are even instances where love fails after marriage. This is because; they get the flower in the hand, but forget to nurture the garden that yielded it. There is a garden of love inside every individual. Each and every flower in the garden is the precious moments experienced during the entire life through so many loving souls you came across. More than processing just a single flower, it is highly essential that the fragrant garden of love inside is nurtured and kept live.
The hidden truth about Love is that ‘Love helps you to love yourself first and finds its way in spreading to others through you’. We have to understand that all the miracles and precious feelings occur in you when you experience love, not because of the love you have on the other person, but typically because that is the point when you have started loving yourself and that is when the garden of love inside you is also recognized and nurtured.
Just to abide to the two laws of love and keep your love alive, there may be a necessity to undergo anything like sacrifice, tolerance, endurance, acceptance, hard-work, time, patience etc… However, you can be sure that when you have done anything and everything possible just to abide to the rules of love, the fragrance of love would remain in your garden of love and in the garden of the souls you loved and spread through you and those souls forever.

LOCK –UP YOUR PEACE

In our day to day life, it is in fact amazing to think that most of us spend at least two-third of our time for accumulating, taking care and retaining money & other material possessions. It includes even simple day to day activities like Cleaning and locking the house, vehicle maintenance, managing bills, shopping, locking up the treasures in bank, working hard the entire day to accumulate more possessions, searching for ways to enhance the possessions and the list goes on. Anything done apart from that is done just for the sake of it.

If we think a little deeper, anyone will accept that whatever is being done is with the underlying objective to get “Peace”; if not immediately, at least in future. This is the buried subtle truth in the heart of any individual. Be it a beggar or a terrorist, they have their own ways to accumulate their possessions and they do what they do to conquer their inner Peace.

When we are doing so many things, are we remaining peaceful the entire day? How many times in a day, we are letting our inner peace being robbed just in a moment, by innumerable intruders like anger, greed, jealousy, ego, fear, attachment, lust, worries, stress, guilt, frustration… name it whatever!? What have we done to lock-up our most wanted peace within ourselves?

No matter what the situation maybe, every moment it is our duty to examine and safely lock-up our peace at the thought level leading to word level and that leading to action level. It is by doing so, that the fulfillment of living a fruitful life can be achieved. There are five locks that can safeguard our peace from any of the intruders. Two locks for thought level (positive thought and acceptance), one lock for word level (mouth lock) and two locks at action level (love and detachment).

Lock 1: The most important lock for peace is “Positive Thought”. Our thoughts have amazing powers to control over our body, mind and even the entire universe. So, it is very essential to watch over our thoughts and cut off any negative thought that is stealing the peace at the very root level itself. It is very essential that every thought of ours has to be vibrant with positive energy and so will it be reflected in our words and action too. There are two tools that can help us in achieving this: hope and self-control. Anything can be changed or regained only with one light of hope always burning in you. Fill your thoughts completely with the hope of having the future you aspire to have. Secondly, it is very essential to control our inner nature that includes the negative traits/anything that is going to take out the peace of people around us at the thought level itself.

Lock 2: The second lock is “Acceptance” of people and situations. Acceptance gives the courage to face anything in life with the in-built faith that the end result can definitely be made positive. When the people and situations are accepted as they are, it not only helps in retaining our peace but also render space and sharpen our mind to pull out the best solution possible. The tools that will help us in acceptance of people are empathy and forgiveness. The tools that will help us in acceptance of situations are courage and faith.

Lock 3: The third lock is for the mouth. We are already provided with two natural locks for our mouth (the teeth and lips). Any word out of the mouth has to surpass these two locks. This is itself a symbolic representation of how controlled one has to be over words. Most of the time peace is lost when one lets of the words without any necessity or without the deep analysis of the consequences. Silence by itself is a wonderful tool we can practice under any negative situation that we sense. In the scale of positive words to negative words, the peace quotient will be max when our words are entirely positive and decreases so and so the more the negativity we use in our words.

Lock 4: The fourth lock is “Love”. When you truly love yourself and love each and everything you do, that love will spread to other people around you also through you. You would then start loving this entire world. That love will bring you all the success and happiness you desire in your life and you will be blessed with abundant peace. For, love is the most powerful source of energy based on which the universe is operating. Any change for good is possible, only with love.

Lock 5: The fifth lock for peace is “Detachment” from people and material possessions. You can give your entire love and time to all people around you. You can conquer the whole world and live the life of a king. All these can be done with one thought ruling you that ‘the world is just a temporary space for yourself, anything and everything’. This thought is only going to help you to love and conquer in a more peaceful way as, you will not have any expectations from people nor will any failure disturb you.

Any situation in life where your peace is on stake can be safeguarded using any one or more of these locks. And, having done so, last but not the least, do you remember what we normally do after locking? Yes ! checking if we have locked it fine. So ask the question to yourself “Am I in Peace now?”.

Marriages are made in heaven? !

Shyam was very excited about his marriage being fixed. With all joy, happiness and expectations he lay on his bed dreaming about his to be wife and their life after marriage… And, eventually dozed off.

In that blissful moment, God appeared in his dream. Shyam got so delighted seeing God. God spoke to him : “ You must be knowing that marriages are made in Heaven, I am here to greet you a very happy married life. In accordance to the same, I can grant you any boon you ask for. Ask me whatever you feel, can help you lead a very happy married life.”


Shyam was all the more thrilled about this offer and decided that he had to make the best use of it. So, he started to list.


Shyam: Well, First and foremost I want my wife to love me to the core as now & forever till death.
God: Great! Is that the only thing you want?
Shyam: Not only that. I have a big list. She has to appreciate me and support me always and help me achieve all the success in my career and my family. She should know me from head to toe and empathize with me when any decision has to be taken. She should take care of me like a child, listen to my problems and be a good companion to nurture my interests and talents, be health conscious, take care of me & my family members and be loyal and honest with me. Above all she should tolerate any of my mistakes or when I am in mood out/sad, with all the patience, she should guide me in the right path with an ever- smiling face. She should know whatever I like and always keep me happy with sweet surprises and lots of happy moments.
God: I am happy that you have understood the essence of marriage. I shall grant you this boon provided you answer right for my two questions:
Question1: Do you possess all the above qualities you asked your wife to have?
Shyam: Well… not all. But, yes I possess at least half of it.
God: All right !!
Question2: If you have to entirely cultivate all these qualities completely in you, how long do you think it will take for you?
Shyam: I am sure that if my wife is given all these qualities, it will not be difficult for me to reciprocate.
God: Shyam, it will not be fair and right on my part to give you someone who is full of love when you are at times hostile, or a person so caring and understanding when you are at times selfish or not ready to empathize.


Marriage is a lifelong education. It is where you and your partner make adjustments and aim not merely to please each other but to be better human beings. A perfect relationship cannot happen overnight. It is a lifelong pursuit.
I cannot give you a perfect partner because you are not. However, I will give you a partner who can grow along with you all the qualities you are looking for and become the PERFECT SPOUSE you wish for.

The secret of a happy married life is that, it has to be a team work by both of you to fulfil each of your expectations mutually. As it is rightly said:” Be to the other person as you would wish them to be to you”. So is the philosophy of marriage too.

If both of you understand this and work towards grooming yourselves, the PERFECT relationship will be achieved in a very short period of time. But if one of you is not ready to bend, it has to be the responsibility of the other person to keep showering their love so that the reciprocation happens some time. However, if both are not ready to bend, it is not the marriage that gets broken but the relationship. That is where the essence of marriage is lost.

Shyam: I understand that I have been so selfish in expecting only the other person to bend when I had not even considered grooming myself. This is indeed a wonderful insight that helps me understand that I have the sole responsibility to create the happiness which in turn will be reciprocated by my spouse and other people around me.
God: Absolutely. It is true that marriages are made in Heaven. But, Perfect relationships are not made in Heaven. They are created on earth over a period of time.

Be the Creator

One Sunday morning Shyam and his sister Chinnu were playing in their garden with sand. They were busy creating various animals, birds and flowers using the moulds that their dad had presented them that new year. Chinnu exclaimed “Look !!! I have created so many things. A bear, my favourite rabbit, a crow, doggy, elephant and a lotus”. Then she looked at Shyam perplexed and asked: “Why have you not used the moulds? You have not created anything ! What are you doing with the sand?”
Shyam looked at her and asked:” Can your rabbit jump? Can the doggy you created play with you?” Chinnu interrupted. “Stop ! they don’t have life. Only God creates the creatures with life. “ Shyam explained:” Well in that case, I have created a life now. I have buried a mango seed inside the ground just now and have watered it. You know, one day my seed will grow into a huge tree and give us fruits.” Chinnu was overwhelmed and excited about her brother’s creation of life. Till that day she did not realise that every man is given the potential to become God “The Creator”. She told her brother that she was very happy about his creation.
They ran to their mom to share that happy news. Their mom appreciated their effort and said that their job is not just over with the creation. The next step is the most important step where they have to nurture their creation to help it grow and attain its fullest form.
So every day they watered it and ensured that everything possible for it to grow is done. They did for two complete weeks. And, nothing happened. They were very disappointed and told their mom that they were frustrated that their efforts were not paid off. Their mom assured them that no effort will go on toss and also told them that having done their part, they have to have the patience for the invisible and empowered nature to respond for their action. With all the hope they continued to act and one fine day, there was a sprout protruding out of the soil. Shyam and Chinnu jumped in joy on seeing their first creation of life pop out of the heavenly mother earth.
We start our life as a cell and in just two months, all the major organs begin to function when the baby is only a size of a bean. In just 9 months, we are complete and out as the sprout into the hands of the Mother (Earth). Each of us are like the seed sown by God into our mother’s womb. Seldom do we realise the extent of nurture that God gives us from the conception with all the hope that one fine day we will use all our given potential and grow up to bear and share the fruits of life. Yes ! God can only nurture us. It is our responsibility to utilize the potential inside us to grow and attain the fullest form in life.
So, let us start utilizing the creator inside us. Let us create our purpose as dreams, nurture them and see them grow into bliss and success in our life. Start now ! Be the creator of your life !!!