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The most important factor to determine the success of anyone’s life is happiness. All of us would agree on this one thing at least. We might want have different definitions of success, we might do different things to achieve it, but everything we do, the end is always this: happiness. People work hard to get rich and they get rich to become happy.

Happiness is always the end, everything else is just a means. And when you learn to be happy, whether there is a means or not is when you learn the real way to life.

Pay attention 

The best thing about finding happiness in small things is that it’s always right in front of you. You just have to pay attention. You just have to look for it. 

The things that make you laugh aren’t that rare. Its not a bucket full of money. It’s just a bucket full of wishes. It’s the moon and the flowers and the book you bought with your savings and the gifts you get from family and the gifts you sometimes don’t get but which are there as a promise, a thing to look forward to, a dream. Its the dreams. It might be a video game you play when you’re sad, or the the ice cream your brothers brings you, or the coffee your father makes for you after dinner, or your mothers warm hugs, or the laughter you share with friends. It can be your teacher who talks to you about your future, and about her past, and the way you find stray dogs on your way to work, the way you feed them some biscuits, the way you linger near the gardens. It’s everywhere. 
It’s even there in this smiling ball floating peacefully in the lake.

Now I’m not asking you to force happiness upon yourself. Don’t pretend that the sun dipping itself orange in the ocean gives you any sense of pleasure if it doesn’t. 

But do try to look at it once before you convince yourself of the ugliness of the world. 

There are plenty of ugly things in the world, I know. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any pretty ones. Its just that we’re more readily aware of the evil. Goodness takes some effort to be visible. 

There’s even a cognitive bias to explain this, called the negativity bias. According to this we have a natural tendency to weigh negative information more heavily that positive information. To understand this better, you may even relate it to the concept of loss aversion—a corollary to negativity bias from economics which shows us that people are generally more motivated to avoid a loss than to accept a gain. 

This negativity bias is instinctive to us, but we can train ourselves to look for the positive things in life. We get only what we ask for. 

We find only what we try to find.

So while it might be more effort to look for beauty in the ordinariness in the world, it certainly isn’t worthless. When we observe the little things around us that give us happiness without even making us conscious of it, we become grateful for them. We appreciate these little things. 

And that which is appreciated ceases to remain little. We make them big by acknowledgment alone. 

Wander through life

I recently read about a really thought-provoking analogy about life. It compared life to a hiking trip, the destination being the mountain and since I love analogies and metaphors, I’ll write one here. 

So, life is like climbing a mountain. You’re going uphill, you reach the peek and then you go downhill, but then you start looking up again because look!—there’s another peek to be reached. Another mountain to climb. 

I think life is a series of small mountains over one big mountain, and even when you’re going downhill on a smaller one, you’re still working towards the highest peek. The final peek. Even that descent brings you closer to your final peek. I don’t know what’s after that final peek. Maybe it’s a cliff, maybe it goes all the way down like a slide. I do, however, know what that peek is. It’s death. And since no one really talks about what comes after death with any certainty, I won’t either. 

But we’re not going to talk about the mountain top, we’re going to talk about the journey. And the climb. 

The thing with some people is that they climb only to reach the top; they climb but they fail to enjoy it. And when they do reach the top, it’s time to die and then they realise that they should’ve taken some pictures on the way, or stopped for lunch by the clear stream flowing downhill. They realise that perhaps they should’ve made jokes about their legs aching and that maybe that would’ve dulled the pain. They remember the oranges they could’ve picked from the trees and the strangers they could’ve befriended and the campfires they could’ve had. 

They realise, in a word, that they would do it right this time if only they could climb again. But the thing is, we can’t climb again. And the big peeks of life that we crave for years pale in comparison to a little bit of laughter and a night full of stars. 

If life is a climb, don’t just climb tirelessly.

Let yourself wander. 

Let yourself breathe. 

Let yourself pick some oranges.

Learn to complain 

Now this might sound like a really contradictory advice. Complain to find happiness. Such a wierd suggestion. But the thing is that it’s not. It’s not wierd at all. 

Personally, I never really understood the concept of taking everything positively. I mean, is everything that happens in life positive? If only!

Life is full of negativities and dark energies that seek to suck the soul out of your body. If you see all this dark energy as positive, you’re lying to yourself, and ultimately, you’ll get tired of pretending. It’s never good to pretend that something that’s bothering you is not. 

Admit. Accept. Complain. 

I’m not talking about the sort of complaining where you never stop. Where you just mop around for the whole day, for the whole week. There actually are such people—they never stop complaining. I’m not telling you to become like them. That is another kind of tiring attitude—never even trying to see the good. 

What I’m asking for is a balance. Find the grey area. There’s plenty of it everywhere. Find the balance between hopeless pessimism and forced optimism. 

When your boss is being rude and irrational, complain to your family. When your employees don’t work, complain. Complain if your back hurts or if your phone broke or if you fell down while just walking. Complain and then laugh about it. 

Complain and forget about it. And maybe remember it again, later, and you’ll laugh more. 

Suppressing your emotions, forcing them into ‘everything’s fine’ might let you convince yourself that everything is actually fine. But at the end of the day, when you’re being honest to yourself, you’ll find that it gets harder and harder to feel fine. 

What you aren’t throwing out of your systems will gather there and build up into an unconscious negativity. It’s toxic. 

So let it out. 

Talk to people who listen to your complaints with a gentle ear, who laugh with you when you’re willing to, who make you laugh when you’re not. 

If all else fails

We have not long to live. Some people live for a decade or two, and remember these few years for the rest of their lives. Some more unfortunate ones have only the memories they have captured in their cameras to account for happiness—the promotions, the vacations, the holidays, the once in a while get togethers with loved ones. There are few who live for every second of the time that they’re alive. For them happiness comes from within, and they attribute that happiness to the little things outside—the moon, a coffee, ice cream. They sing songs and find things that match the lyrics in the world. If all else fails, if you’re not in the mood to open your mouth and strike a note, just look for one of these people. Look for the singers, the poets. They’ll help you see the joy sitting in front of you.