How to Be Happy in Life

“After doing all that you are doing, if happiness is not happening, somewhere the fundamentals of life have been missed.”

—Sadhguru

Sadhguru: Being happy or unhappy is actually your choice. People have chosen to be unhappy because they think that by being unhappy they will get something. It is being taught that if you suffer, you will go to heaven. If you are a suffering human being, what will you do in heaven anyway? Hell will be more of a home for you. Once you are unhappy, whatever you get, what does it matter? If you are happy, even if you do not get anything, what does it matter? This is not a philosophy, this is your true nature. By nature, you want to be happy. This is not a teaching that I am trying to give you – “Be happy; be happy.” Every creature wants to be happy. Everything that you are doing, every single act you are performing is to seek happiness in some way.
 

For example, why would you want to serve people? Serving people gives you happiness; that is why. Someone wants to wear good clothes; someone wants to make a lot of money, because that gives them happiness. Whatever every human being is doing on this planet, it does not matter what, even if he is giving away his life to someone, he is doing it because it gives him happiness. Happiness is the fundamental goal of life. Why do you want to go to heaven? Only because someone has told you that if you go to heaven, you will be happy. 

The Source of Unhappiness 

After doing all that you are doing, if happiness is not happening, somewhere the fundamentals of life have been missed. When you were a child, you were simply happy. Without doing anything, you were happy. Then somewhere along the way, you lost this. Why did you lose it? You got deeply identified with many things around you, your body, your mind. What you call as your mind is actually just the stuff that you have picked up from social situations around you. Depending upon what kind of society you have been exposed to, that is the kind of mind you have acquired. 

Everything in your mind right now is something you picked up from outside. This nonsense did not come with you; you picked it up and got identified with it. You got so identified with it that now it is causing you misery. You can collect any kind of garbage you want, it is okay. As long as you are not identified with it, there is no problem. This body is not yours; you have picked it up from the earth. You were born with a tiny body which your parents gave you. After that, you ate plants and animals and grew. You borrowed it from the earth; it is not yours. You have to use it for a while, so enjoy it and go. But you have become so deeply identified with it that you think that this is you. No wonder you are suffering. The basis of all this misery is that you have established yourself in untruth. You are deeply identified with that which you are not.

Discount What You Are Not

The whole process of spirituality is only to dis-identify with that which you are not. When you do not know what you really are, can you search for it? If you search, only your imagination will run wild. If you start thinking, “Who am I?”, someone will tell you that you are God’s child. Someone else will tell you that you are the devil’s child. Someone might tell you something else. It is just endless beliefs, and imagination runs wild. The only thing that you can do is that whatever you are not, start discounting that. When everything is discounted, there is something which cannot be discounted. When you arrive at that, you will see that there is no reason for misery in this world. 

Editor’s Note: Engineer your life the way you want it with the New York Times Bestseller - Inner Engineering - A Yogi’s Guide to Joy.