For our whole life, we go on looking for happiness because happiness is one of the main purposes of our life. To attain happiness, we do so many things. But still most of the time we found ourselves self-unhappy at the end of our life. Why? The most obvious reason is that we do not understand happiness. Happiness is like short-term happiness and long-term happiness. Long-term happiness is real happiness because it stays with us forever. We have to plan in advance, which type of happiness we want short-term or long-term. There are many enjoyments in life, which gives us short-term happiness. These are like laziness, sleeping, watching TV, listening to music, playing or dreaming. I am not saying that we should not do all these things. However, do them only when they are required or you have free time.
However, if we do them in excess, then they may give us some happiness momentarily; but takes the long-term happiness away from us. Some of us ruin our whole life for these small pleasures. For achieving real happiness in life, we should be able to understand which thing gives us happiness and what our main life purposes that need to be fulfilled. Most of us do not understand all these things that we have to go through some initial pains for achieving long-term goals. But after achieving these goals, most of our worries go away and we found ourselves happy.
There is a clear example of a student, who studies for the whole year and comes first in class. On the other hand, his friend watched movies, played and wasted time, therefore failing. The student who comes first in the class took the extra pain and sacrificed momentarily happiness, but achieved bigger happiness in terms of his success. Now, everybody likes him and quotes his examples. Whereas his friend, who has gone for short-term happiness is unhappy after the results. In this way, his small-term enjoyments turned into long-term unhappiness.
If we do not plan from day one and for long-term goals, then we will be defiantly going to land in unhappiness. We require an understanding of things which gives us happiness; even if it may be associated with some pain in the present. Our life’s aim should be to attain mastery in the field, which we like and get exceptional results in that. You may be saying that it is not possible for everybody, but I will not agree, it is possible for everybody with some proper planning and taking some pain. We should have the guts to attain our true happiness through our hard efforts. This is the real purpose of our life. If we do not do this, we will always remain unhappy.
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