How to create the feeling of happiness?

Everyone wants to be happy in life. However, as life progresses many of us experience that in spite of being successful and achieving everything in life we are not happy.

Image by Swamibu via Flickr

All the success and achievements are not creating happiness in our lives. As a result we lose interest in life and it appears as if we are merely existing rather than fully living our lives.

So the question is why does it happen? We seek success in order to be happy then why don’t we actually feel happy after achieving it?

Well, this happens because we operate from a state of lack and absence. Whenever we stay in a feeling that we lack something in life, no matter what we achieve in the outside life our internal feeling does not change. This is because in order to feel happy we need to change the internal feeling of lack and absence. If this happens then we can be happy irrespective of our success and when happiness does not depend on success, there is less stress to succeed and therefore success also comes naturally.


This can be understood with help of an illustration: If you have an infection in your body then even if you wear good clothes and perfume, you will not feel healthy. When the body is not internally healthy even though it is externally clean you cannot feel healthy. In order to feel healthy the body must be healthy and not just appear to be healthy.

Similarly, when you are not feeling good about yourself the problem is with the feeling, the feeling needs to change in order for one to feel happy and not really the outside situation. It is the feeling itself that needs to be addressed.

So how this feeling can be changed?

Most of the feelings in our present have their roots in the past incidents. In these incidents when we go through a painful situation where we are hurt by someone who we consider as our role model (may be our parents, teacher, or any other elderly person) then that painful emotion gets trapped into our consciousness. As long as this emotion lives inside us it is not possible to feel happy. If the incident is one where we have been condemned or criticized then those words of criticism become our own beliefs about ourselves and the painful emotion along with it makes it look real to us.

In order to understand this let us consider this example. It is about a 5 year old girl named Rita. One day her mother who was in hurry to reach her office gave her milk and she spilled it. The mother got impatient and slapped her and scolded her for being so irresponsible. Years later even though Rita grew up to be a nice young lady who did everything with great responsibility, she never truly felt happy or satisfied. This was because as a child when she got slapped the emotion of hurt got trapped inside her and she formed a belief about herself that she was an irresponsible person. So due to this belief she lived with the stress of proving to herself and to others that she is a responsible person. In this case she was operating from a sense of lack. Even though she did everything with responsibility her actual feeling of being irresponsible remained there.

In this example Rita can feel joy and happiness only if her belief and feelings about herself changes and if she operates from the sense of being a responsible person. However, if at an unconscious level she feels irresponsible, then her action of fulfilling responsibilities would always be accompanied with lot of stress to prove to herself and to the world that she is a responsible person.

In trying to become someone that we do not believe that we already are, lies suffering and stress. When actions are aimed at becoming someone then such actions does not bring joy in fact they bring in more dissatisfaction.

At a conscious level you may still think that you are a responsible person and may not be conscious that you are operating from the impression of your past experiences.

So how to become conscious of the beliefs formed in the past and what should be done to change these feelings? In order to change these feelings you need to release the emotion trapped in your consciousness. This can be done by following below mentioned steps:

1. Sit quietly and identify the exact feeling of lack or absence in you. Answer this question: What according to my feeling do I lack in myself? Write whatever comes to you. You may feel that you lack confidence, intelligence, beauty, love, gratitude, kindness, compassion etc.

2. Understand the fact that your sense of lack is not without reason as nothing is without a reason. It is based on you past experience and the most impressionable incidents are the ones that happen in our childhood. So if you are able to remember any such incident that led you to feel a sense of lack then completely recall the incident and experience the pain that you suffered back then. This is important because even though the incident happened so many years ago and everything around your life must have changed now but the pain is sill trapped inside you and it is important to release that pain to change your feeling and belief.

3. If you are unable to recall anything just feel the emotion of lack and see how much pain it is causing you. Completely experience the emotion till it is gone. Once you release your emotions, your feeling will change and your perception about yourself will also change. Also you will get in touch with the wholeness of your being rather than living from the impression created due to a past incident. When you will be able to live from your true state of being, you will feel joy.

So release the impressions of past experiences and get in touch with your inner wholeness and experience the joy and happiness that is already a true state of your being. Know for sure that minus the painful experiences of past and minus our interpretations from these incidences, we are all beings of consciousness and happiness is our true nature. So release all pain from the past and reclaim your true identity.