Some Suggestions On How To Be A Happy Person In Our Very Unhappy World

I love life, I love myself and I am truly happy.

However, things were not always that way. For nearly four decades, I was a very unhappy person, filled with rage, anger, resentment, hatred, low-self worth and despair. In addition, I tended to isolate from the world, constantly threw “pity parties” for myself and frequently had thoughts of “ending it all”.

I was one miserable son-of-a-bi … er, gun.

Thankfully, all of the misery passed away and I became the happy person I am today. And interestingly, I became happy when I stopped trying to be happy.

You see, back in the days when I was a miserable son-of-a-gun, I was on a never-ending quest to find happiness. I was always doing something or the other that I thought would bring an end to the pain and that would make me a happy person. And, oh boy, did I try a lot of things.

I sought happiness in bottles filled with hard liquor and in little clear plastic baggies containing street drugs. I looked for it in bedrooms, including my own and those of scores of women. I carried out numerous searches in bars, night clubs, strip joints and brothels. I tried to find it in the sizable servings of “comfort food” that I consumed on a regular basis. And I could go on.

Yes, I tried and I tried but nothing worked. As a matter of fact, the more I tried to find happiness, the more unhappy I became. I only sank to even greater depths of misery and pain, and got closer and closer to drowning.

Then, something came to me and told me to surrender. I was urged to retreat, to give up on my search for happiness.

Right after that, a steady stream of positive and constructive thoughts came to mind. And, as a result, I developed a way of conducting my life that was quite different from the way I had been conducting it before --and that ultimately delivered me to being the happy person I am today.

The following is a list of the practices that are keeping me in a good place:

-- My alarm clock is set for 5 a.m. and every morning, I get out of bed as soon as it goes off.

-- Immediately, I make up my bed.

-- I take a few moments to quietly express gratitude for such things as having good health, a worthy place in which to live and sufficient funds to purchase all of the things I NEED.

-- I shave, shower and put on clean, neatly pressed clothing and real-hip shoes, even if I have no plans of leaving my home at any time during the day.

-- I fill my day with work and with enjoying simple pleasures such as watching TV, reading, day dreaming about pretty women, taking long walks to nowhere, window shopping, working out at the gym and/or writing a hub or two.

-- When someone “pushes one of my buttons” I do not respond by lashing out or retaliating in some way or the other. I react with a clever come back or else I just walk away from the situation.

-- I do not allow myself to become nervous or angry about things over which I have no control, such as the strife that is taking place throughout the world and all of the dumb things that dumb people are doing.

-- I try very hard not to be judgmental, overly critical and cynical (that’s a difficult one, for me anyway).

-- I do not ever try to drown my sorrows in alcohol and street or prescription drugs.

-- I do not ever make attempts to drive away my problems with sex, “comfort food” and cruising bars and other “dens of iniquity”.

-- I view the world in real rather than ideal terms. I accept that life “is what it is”.

Perhaps I should have entitled this hub Once I Became Content, I Became A Happy Person.