# Is happiness an attitude? Can you learn to be happy? > You already know that every summer I set myself a goal, and it's that when I have free time I get philosophical. Last year it was the turn of detachment and... - **Author:** mireia-navarro-vera · **Category:** Adultos - **Published:** 2018-09-20 · **Updated:** 2018-09-20 - **URL:** https://elteuespai.com/en/is-happiness-an-attitude-can-you-learn-to-be-happy/ - _Translation pending clinical review._ --- You already know that every summer I set myself a goal, and it's that when I have free time I get philosophical. Last year it was the turn of [detachment](/en/what-is-emotional-detachment/) and this year it's been the turn of happiness. It's a topic I've avoided writing about for a long time because I think it's too written about. Everyone has talked about happiness (Einstein, Gandhi, Paulo Coelho, Pablo Neruda, ![happiness quote paulo coelho](/images/blog/2018/09/paulo-coelho.webp) Benjamin Franklin, Aristotle, Gabriel García Márquez…) ![happiness quote mahatma gandhi](/images/blog/2018/09/mahatma-gandhi.webp) Writers, philosophers, actors, geniuses, presidents, and a long list of personalities from our planet have talked about it. That's why I thought…. **what more can I contribute?** and I've seen the answer clearly, **I can teach people to be happy, it's what I do every day in my practice!** And to do so, I can't help but quote two of the phrases I like most about happiness: “ *La felicidad no es algo que venga hecho, es algo que construyes con tus acciones*” Dalai Lama “*Si con todo lo que tienes no eres feliz, con todo lo que te falta tampoco lo serás*” Erich Fromm ## How do I define happiness? I think **happiness is an attitude**, **that can be learned and trained.** That it doesn't depend on my surroundings, nor on what I have or what happens to me, but rather depends more on how I manage all of that. Furthermore, **happiness is individual**, each person holds the secret to their own happiness, the same thing doesn't make us all happy. **It doesn't reside in obtaining things or reaping successes**, that is, **it's not the goal that makes me happy, it's the journey.** When you do a scavenger hunt, the prize isn't the bag of candy, it's the challenges you overcome, the fun is well before the prize. **Happiness is a state of psychological well-being**, a feeling of being at peace with oneself and with what one has, regardless of what is missing or what the other person has. It's filling yourself with pleasant moments and knowing how to enjoy them, whether they're brief or long, whether they require effort or not. It's a **state of full satisfaction with myself and with my life.** If you look up **happiness in the dictionary** you'll get something similar to this: **“State of mind of the person who feels fully satisfied** by enjoying what they desire or by enjoying something good.” ### Learning to be happy #### 1. Know yourself **Who you are and what you like to do.** It's easy, **what makes you feel YES and what makes you feel NO**. We are born with this capacity, although later we forget it. From the moment we are born we already know what we like (contact with our parents, nursing,…) and what we don't (a wet diaper, a loud scream,..) We must listen again to what our body tells us, in order to **get closer and closer to what makes me feel good and move away from what makes me feel bad.** What activities do I like, I can make a list from the simplest to the most complicated: - Having coffee in the morning - Taking a break at work and going out for a walk - Reading - Riding a bike - Playing an instrument…. The list can be long or short, it doesn't matter. But **at least two of these activities should be in your life every day.** Surround yourself with what you like and move away from what makes you feel bad. It's that easy. #### 2. Take care of yourself **Dedicate time to yourself**. We need to have a small space to do those things that make us feel good. **Taking care of others is very good, but taking care of others so much that I have no time left to take care of myself is not so good** and it will end up taking its toll on me. Personal well-being, as its very name indicates, is personal and non-transferable. My self-care only depends on me. **Don't expect others to come and do what is your responsibility.** If you want to go to the gym, go and sign up, don't expect your partner to say to you: “you could sign up for the gym, I'll take care of the kids while you go”. **It's not your partner's responsibility to make you take care of yourself, nor your parents' or friends', it's yours.** #### 3. Value what you have **We spend our lives focused on what we lack.** It's good to have goals, but living only thinking about the next thing we must achieve is exhausting. **There's one thing that's clear, there will always be something I lack**. If I have a partner I'll probably lack freedom, if I have children I'll lack time, intimacy, freedom…if I'm alone I'll lack company. **If you notice, in order to have something, I must necessarily lack something**. Here is **the great trap**, if my mind is only focused on what I lack, I'm going to become the eternally dissatisfied person. Don't fall into the trap!! Teach your mind to think about what it already has, to enjoy it. Remember: “Si con todo lo que tienes no eres feliz, con todo lo que te falta tampoco lo serás” **What can we do?** Train our mind: **give thanks each night for three things you have in your life**, but they have to be three different things each day, so that there comes a moment when you run out of ideas and you start giving thanks for things as simple as being able to walk, or having both arms, or for having breakfast. Every time I go out to exercise outdoors, I do an act of gratitude, I breathe deeply and think “how lucky I am to be here in this moment”. **We are very fortunate to have what we have, the pity is that we don't know how to see it.** Every time you catch your mind complaining about something it doesn't have, tell it to be quiet and name for it the things it does have. #### 4. Don't compare yourself **If you want to be unhappy, keep comparing yourself always with the one who has the most.** Isn't it true that you never compare yourself with the one who has less than you? It's one of the biggest wastes of time I know of. We people are not comparable to one another, it's like comparing an onion and a tomato, they're alike in that both are vegetables. **We are unique and we all have weak points and strong points**. **I can't be good at everything** but I am at many things and **I can't be liked by everyone** just as I don't like everyone either!! Stop focusing on others and focus your energies on yourself, on strengthening your strong points and improving your weak points, and then if you want, compare what you were and what you are, what you knew how to do 10 years ago and what you know how to do now. This comparison is more realistic. Live focused on yourself and not on the rest of the world. #### 5. Don't judge yourself **What a burden I carried! Always feeling that I was under someone's watchful gaze, always waiting for the verdict. I have been my own worst judge**. Until one day I decided to stop judging myself and I felt much lighter. Again the great phrase, the one that helped me most: **You can't be liked by everyone.** There will be those who judge you very favorably and there will be those who don't. Learn to live with that, learn to live liking yourself. **Stop having the need to show off about things,** as if everyone had to see how well you do this or the number of things you have. **Life is much more peaceful without always being up on a stage where everyone sees you and judges you.** But to stop judging oneself is not easy because **it comes from our ego,** that ego **which tells us that we have to be perfect and reap successes**. That ego which feeds on vanity and which is never satisfied. I don't have to be perfect, nor do I have to be successful, I simply have to enjoy what I do and give it my all, the rest comes later. #### 6. Abandon complaining Every time I complain about something I remind my brain how bad I feel because of it. For example, every time I say: **“uuff how hot it is” I'm reminding my brain of the temperature and I increase the sensation of heat**. That's how it is, **with complaining I increase my suffering**. That's why [stopping complaining](/en/9-reasons-to-stop-complaining/) is an exercise we should all do. In our [post](/en/9-reasons-to-stop-complaining/) I explain how to do it. The benefits of abandoning complaining are clear: on one hand the feeling of happiness increases because one stops focusing only on the bad, and on the other hand it makes you realize the “friends” who live in constant complaint and who make you unhappy. #### 7. This too shall pass There's a Buddhist tale that explains this very well. A king asks a wise man for his inner peace in exchange for any riches, and the wise man gives him a ring with an inscription bearing the phrase that will bring him that peace. I'll leave you a video with the tale so you can watch it. [video width="1280" height="720" mp4="/images/blog/2018/09/filosofia-ser-feliz-el-teu-espai.mp4" preload="none" poster="/images/blog/2018/03/Reeduciones.jpg"][/video] In the end everything is transitory in life, everything is passing through, nothing endures motionless. Some things come and others go, and I must **learn to accept all of this without clinging to things or to people,** knowing that **everything will pass, both the good and the bad, nothing endures forever.** To delve deeper into this point you can read the post on [detachment ](/en/what-is-emotional-detachment/) When you go through a bad moment in your life, remember: this too shall pass. But when you're going through a good one, think: this too shall pass. The first will help you put pain in perspective, the second to not cling to things. ### Conclusions I can learn to be happy and moreover it only depends on me. It doesn't depend on what I have or who surrounds me, only on me. So **I'm going to start taking responsibility for my happiness starting today**. No one is surprised if I tell them that **to have a healthy body you have to eat in a balanced way and do physical exercise even if it's gentle, right?** And furthermore that you have to do it your whole life, it's no good doing it for a month and then stuffing yourself with pizza! Well, to have a healthy mind and feel that well-being that happiness gives, you also have to work at it: *First know what you like and become aware, then surround yourself with that and take care of yourself, without comparing yourself, or judging yourself, stopping complaining about the bad things that happen to you and thinking: this too shall pass.*