how can i become happy?

Question

im very depressed and often think of suicide, but i know there's something out there for me and just can't figure out what it is. If someone has had similar experience to this and found the answer to happiness please give me your best answer...or anyone who thinks they can help that would be great.

Answer 1

The first problem is that we define happiness as a pursuit. It's something out there to hunt down. Perhaps we'll find it in a new car, a better job, a girlfriend or boyfriend, or a winning lottery ticket. We tell ourselves, "If only I were more confident, better looking, more successful...then I would happy."

We all know people who seem to have it all and are still unhappy. Yet there are others who struggle with difficult circumstances and still exude a sense of joy.

Happiness has nothing to do with external circumstances. Happiness depends only on internal choices.

The Sages say, "Who is rich? He who is happy with what he has," (Ethics of the Fathers 4:1). All events are neutral. It is how you choose to interpret these events that determines your emotional state. No external situation can make you happy. If you choose to appreciate what you have and see the good in every situation, you will feel rich and content. If you take the good for granted, or decide to focus on the negative, you will be miserable no matter what.

The secret of happiness is to really appreciate what you have. Count your blessings every day, and learn to savor the sweetness of life.

Appreciating the good doesn't mean burying your head in the sand and ignoring real problems. Don't be a Pollyanna, but strive to live with joy while confronting the challenges around you. Happiness gives you the energy to accomplish and carry out your responsibilities. Worry and despair are subtle ways of not dealing with your responsibilities.

Happiness isn't a happening. It's a choice you can make right now.

IN SUMMARY
happiness does not depend on external circumstances.

Happiness is a choice to appreciate what you have and to look for the good in every situation. How you choose to interpret events determines your emotional state.

The secret of happiness is to appreciate what you have. Count your blessings every day.
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1) The ability to focus on happiness-producing thoughts, as opposed to those which cause unhappiness.

2) The ability to evaluate events and situations as positive instead of negative. (Or at least to lower the degree of negativity - i.e. rather than considering some discomfort as a tragedy, evaluating it as minor.)

Answer 2

Hi,

I have been in a similar situation and I am changed because I have participated in Transactional Analysis and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (personal development domains) workshops and I have also went for two years in Transactional Analysis psychotherapy. During this years I have made a lot small changes that, in time, greately improved my life. I used to get depressed almost every day before that. Now it's a whole year since I didn't have a depression and I am fully convinced that depression is out of my life for good.

When asking myself how to get happy, I guess these are my best two answers:

1. Emotions are like boxes where you keep your thaughts. If you open the negative boxes, you have the negative thaughts. Think about times when you were happy, instead. It was impossible to have negative thaughts then.

I don't know where you hold your happiness boxes, but you surely know, or you can take time to find out. Take a notebook and write in it everything that comes to your mind that makes you happy. And later, select something from there and start doing. The ugly part it's in starting, because when you start you don't have the proper emotional state, but without starting, you miss all the nice experiences that are there along the road for you.

It happened to me to start accidentally a conversation with somebody and later I had a great time with that person. I know I can win a lot of nice experiences if I just start.

2. Your internal state doesn't change the world, but your action do. So if you feel bad inside, feel secure, the world won't collapse on you. And also, you can decide to feel good inside whatever might happen outside. You can feel good inside while looking to make the best solution from a complicated situation.

I wish you good luck!

Answer 3

Well, if you've recently lost someone or something very dear to you, you're probably grieving and should visit a grief counselor.
If you haven't lost anything important in the recent past, but something stressful has happened to you (a car accident, or something like that), you might have post-traumatic stress disorder, where you are anxious about the stress you have recently endured, and you should seek counseling.
If you are depressed for no reason, you may have a problem with your brain chemistry. Your brain releases chemicals that make you feel sad, angry, happy, or depressed without reason, or it doesn't take much prompting for it to release them. The chance of this being the case is increased if anyone in your family has ever had unexplainable depression or if you have a family history of suicide. If this is what you think is going on, you should seek counseling and they will likely put you on mood control medication.
If you just gave birth, you could have post-partum depression, which is fairly common. You should talk to your doctor.
If you just dropped your cupcake on the floor and the dog ate it, you're probably overreacting to the situation.
Whatever the case, suicide is not the answer. Anything can be fixed if you give it a chance. Even if you're not particularly religious, despair is still the only unpardonable sin. If you give up, you cannot ever hope to fix your problems. I suggest getting to the bottom of why you're depressed and then dealing with that by getting counseling or eliminating stress from your life. Depression is a very common problem among humans, but it doesn't have to be. The first step to happiness is seeking out someone whom you trust and can confide in, preferably someone trained to deal with depression. Just talking about problems makes them seem so much more manageable.

Answer 4

i don't claim to be the happiest person all the time but have found that if i smile or talk to people friendly that they are smiling in return or friendly towards me. i can not and will not promise that what you give out will come back to the you the same but just know you made the effort to put the happiness out and you are one up on the ones that are not and it will help down to the soul knowing that you can be happy just smiling yourself. a smile an hour will scare the unhappiness away soon enough.

Answer 5

The thing is this world is called Maya (illusion) it is temporary and full of misery. We are not these bodiess,IE; race,color, nationality, religion, job, mind, sense, intellect, etc. we are eternal spirit souls, part and parcel of the Supreme Soul, also known as Krishna, Allah, Jehovah, Vishnu, etc. We have to reconnect to our Maker to actually be happy. If one takes their own life they do not die only the bodie dies and they become a ghost for a very long time. A ghost is a disembodied soul who is lost and incessantly suffers the misery they experienced before and at the time of death. They have no senses to enjoy so they try to take over others bodies. No one hears or sees them so they are extremely lonely accept for the other hateful miserable ghosts who try to attack them constantly. If one wants to get out of misery and illusion the quickest and easiest way is to chant the Maha Mantra (the great mantra for deliverance from suffering and illusion) go to krishnaculture. for details also go to stephen-knapp. read e-book the Key to Real Happiness.

Answer 6

I've heard depression comes from the food we eat. Like during the processing of the food. I know people that are on depression pills, and they are still depressed. What helps me is being around people I love and doing things i like to do. Even if you don't feel like you want to do them, just do them anyway and it makes you feel better. Go out and have fun, go bowling or go to a movie. Anything like that would help.

Answer 7

Imagine this scenario multiplied by 100 (an extremely conservative estimate of the number of shelters per state) multiplied by 50 (number of U.S. states) multiplied by 365 (number of days per year). Scary, huh, that there are tens of thousands of dogs dumped at shelters in conditions such as this and for reasons like this EVERY YEAR. And what you've described here isn't even the most horrendous of circumstances, this is "same old same old." Not to mention cats. I don't have the answer to the "why" but I have the answer to the "how." Most of it begins with backyard breeders, pets stores, and puppy mills not educating those who buy their pups, not caring, not following up, not placing with a return contract. This ignorance trickles down to the owners and to society in general. One solution? Perhaps if every pet owner made it a new year's resolution to volunteer at their local shelter for one hour, one day, one week, one month -- and see for themselves the apathy that exists among fellow humans. It would pull many heads out of the sand, and may be the beginning of the end of the need for rescuers like you.

Answer 8

Please consider seeing a therapist/psychiatrist/other mental health professional who can evaluate you for your depression.
Especially if you are considering suicide!

To answer your question about the answer to happiness, I don't think that there is any one answer for happiness-everyone is different and has different needs.

Try this website: www.authentichappiness.com

Good luck!

Answer 9

Ask yourself can it get worse
if not be happy
If yes wait and see then
Ask yourself can it get worse
if not be happy
if yes loop

Answer 10

take a day at the spa thats what I do


love Ya
Jessica H