The purpose of life is to be happy – at least according to the Dalai Lama. However, most people aren’t quite sure what happiness actually means. Is happiness being surrounded by a lot of nice things – nice home, vacation home, fancy cars, nice clothes, nice vacations? Because, it seems that over the last few years, a lot of people fell into the trap of evaluating their happiness based on these kinds of things – and comparing their ‘happiness’ to what others owned.

Believe it or not, I had a client call me at one point to tell me that his wife was going to leave him because she said and I quote ‘The neighbours go on better holidays!’ Say goodbye, I said! Happiness has nothing to do with having plenty of nice things – it doesn’t exclude them, but they are not a prerequisite. Happiness is about having happy times or, as I keep telling my clients, ‘being gurdy!’ It’s a feeling that you have that all is well with the world – with your world.

Happiness is a now thing. Unfortunately, the normal mind is all over teh place and certainly not here now, so it simply cannot experience happiness. Psychology confirms that the average mind is stuck in the past (in particular on the childhood experiences that have created our self-image) and focused in the future (either looking forward to something good, wanting for something that we haven’t got or worrying about something or other that we’d prefer not to happen).

Happiness is directly linked to how well you pay attention – again something that the normal mind will never master. You’ve got to relearn how to pay attention – it was second nature to you when you were child when you experienced everything new with each of your five senses. To be happy and successful you have to come to your senses all over again. Once you do, you won’t have to go looking for happiness – it will simply find you.