Be happy. Decide to be happy. If you want to be happy, be happy! No one cares if you're happy or not, so why wait for permission? And did it really matter if you had been deeply unhappy in your past? Who but you remembered that?
Be happy! and meditation will follow. Be happy, and religion will follow. Happiness is a basic condition. People become religious only when they are unhappy - then their religion is pseudo. Try to understand why you are unhappy.
No one should ever ask themselves that: why am I unhappy? The question carries within it the virus that will destroy everything. If we ask that question, it means we want to find out what makes us happy. If what makes us happy is different from what we have now, then we must either change once and for all or stay as we are, feeling even more unhappy.
Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it. So if, from perhaps some unhealthy desire for sympathetic support, you describe your life in negative terms you will find that this will reinforce your mind's negative emotions and make you unhappy and even more susceptible to feeling unhappy in the future. By simply doing the reverse and focusing on why you are lucky and grateful things are not worse, you will strengthen and increase your mind's positive emotions and make yourself happy and even more likely to feel happy in the future.
In a vacuum all photons travel at the same speed. They slow down when travelling through air or water or glass. Photons of different energies are slowed down at different rates. If Tolstoy had known this, would he have recognised the terrible untruth at the beginning of Anna Karenina? 'All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own particular way.' In fact it's the other way around. Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalisation. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.
It's what's in *yourself* that makes you happy or unhappy.
When you are angry, it means you, yourself are unhappy. Even if you are wronged, you are still making yourself unhappy if you feel anger.
My rule is, when you are unhappy, think about it. But when you're happy, don't. Why spoil it? You're probably happy for some ridiculous reason and you'd just spoil it to know it.
A child gets sick with a chronic disease of unhappiness not from unhappy circumstances but from unhappy people around him. Unhappy people cannot raise happy children; it's impossible.
If you are happy, you can give happiness. If you don't love yourself and if you are unhappy with yourself, you can't give anything else but that.
The only reason why you are unhappy is because you are trying to be happy.
I want to be happy; why do I do things that make me unhappy?
Even if you're unhappy, just pretend that you're happy. Eventually, your smile will be contagious to yourself. I had to learn that, I used to think, 'I'm being fake,' but you know what? Better to be fake and happy than real and miserable.
Even if you're unhappy, just pretend that you're happy. Eventually, your smile will be contagious to yourself. I had to learn that. I used to think, 'I'm being fake,' but you know what? Better to be fake and happy than real and miserable.
All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
What is wrong with enjoying yourself? What is wrong in being happy? If there is anything wrong it is always in your unhappiness, because an unhappy person creates ripples of unhappiness all around him. Be happy!