Method of saving ourselves from getting overrun by unhappiness
Whatever may be your ultimate goal; happiness is the interim goal of everybody since nobody wants to lead an unhappy life.
A lot depends on what sort of attitude we have — that is, whether we have a happy attitude or a sullen attitude and it is true that if we have a sullen attitude we can’t change our attitude overnight.
However, it is very necessary to maintain a good relationship with at least some of the people in our life with whom we may chat whenever we may feel sad.
We know the value of having had good relationships only when we feel lonely in our life and realise how painful it is to have nobody by the side of our bed when we may fall sick or when we may be suffering from loneliness.
If we try to look for some of the main reasons why we feel unhappy in our life — we shall find that the most pernicious things that make us sad in our life are the grudges we carry in our mind for some of our close acquaintances.
Grudges are invisible enemies of happiness.
So the first thing we have to do is — list down the grudges we may be carrying in our mind against any of our acquaintances.
Even if we may have genuine reasons for harbouring such grudges, as long as we carry a grudge against even a single person in our know — it is as stupid to think that we may be in a happy frame of mind as to think that we could make the soup of mushrooms even though we have no mushrooms in our fridge.
So the first thing we have to do is get rid of our all grudges against our all acquaintances even though such grudges may be lying only in the backyard of our mind.
For instance, I may tell you about some of the grudges I had been carrying in the backyard of my mind for several years.
I may tell you that, of late, I have been quite un-restful in my mind off and on since last month.
When I started looking into the possible reasons what could have been the cause of such unhappiness, I narrowed down to the following causes of my unhappiness.
A few years back, in the 2010s, I had gone to give a gift to one of my sisters-in-law in a metropolis at about 6 p.m. It so happened that one of her uncles-in-law came to make a courtesy call on them to tell them that he had just retired from his job and had purchased a plot very close to their locality and was planning to construct a house over it very soon. Though I had met him for the first time I thought it would be better for me to provide him even my company but I got so much engrossed in conversation with him that I did not notice that I could miss my train unless I caught a taxi to reach the railway station immediately. So I requested her husband to drop me to the nearest taxi stand by his car. But my sister-in-law told me that only a few days back some hoodlums had waylaid their neighbour and had murdered him. So it would not be safe for him to drop me at the taxi stand in his car. As such, I should better walk down to the nearest taxi stand by myself.
Though I walked down to the nearest taxi-stand it took me so much time that when I reached the railway station to board the train, I found that it had already started rolling out of the platform. So I would have missed it if I would have reached the station even two or three seconds late.
Though I was able to catch the train quite in time, all the time, I kept on thinking how mean it was on the part of my sister-in-law that it did not matter if some hoodlums waylaid me on the way but she did not want her husband to risk his life and I bore this grudge against her in my mind ever since. So much so, I decided to have no contact with her anymore for the rest of my life.
Similarly, I had recently developed a grudge against even my wife.
But after having figured out it as one of the causes of my unhappiness; I immediately made up my mind to let such grudges meltdown.
At the same time, it also occurred to me that instead of thinking of the worst part of everything; we should think of only the best part of it.
I also thought of what is known as the “Law of Attraction”.
As I know about it, it surmises that if we continuously think that something has gone wrong with some organ of our body, say, with our liver or our stomach; even if nothing should have gone wrong with our liver or our stomach something was going to go wrong sooner or later if we keep on thinking that something has gone wrong with our liver or our stomach.
That is — it matters what we think.
So, we should be careful about what we think.
In this case, even if such thought may have struck your mind, you should recite in your mind, “No, nothing has gone wrong with my liver or with my stomach. I am perfectly fit and fine”, a few numbers of times.
When we do so, as is surmised under this law, we get reassured that nothing has gone wrong with our liver or with our stomach.
Now think — if we keep on over-thinking that something has gone wrong with our liver or our stomach; we shall not feel like putting even a morsel of anything into our mouth.
Just think, how long are we going to stay alive if we stop eating anything under such an impression — one week, two weeks, three weeks at the most?
The moment this idea struck me I started thinking, “Would I ever like to stay alive for only one or three weeks more?” and I stopped thinking that there should have been anything wrong with my liver or with my stomach.
And now everything is fine with me.
It is how I came out of my enigma.
If you are also leading an unhappy life due to any such enigma; I hope you, too, should be able to get over your enigma the same way as I have been able to get over my enigma.
Of course, the most important thing about happiness and unhappiness is — much the same way as when we don’t like the programme that is being shown on the TV Channel we may be watching we switch over the channel to some other channel; we should switch over the channel of our mind also the same way whenever any sad thoughts start storming our mind assuming that we hold the remote of the channels of our thoughts in our hands.