Happiness....

I came across an article in Times of India recently which spoke about "Liking yourself" as the first step to happiness. I gave it more thought and it really made sense to me....

You need to like yourself and try to achieve happiness from within. People can add to this but no one can initiate that feeling but you. I cannot remember telling myself even once that "I will be happy (period)". I guess happiness to us has always been conditional. It's very common of people to say things like "I will be happy,....IF i find my dream job", "I will be happy....IF i find that someone special" etc.. Why should it be based on something happening? Why cant we just be happy without waiting for things to happen? Am still pondering over these questions!!

The key to liking ourselves lies in embracing our good points and dividing our bad points into two groups - ones which we can change and the others which we cannot. For instance, If I am 5 feet tall and I don't like it, there's not much I can do about it. No miracle can probably change this. There are lots of things beyond our control. We need to just learn to accept things as they are and live with them. So I guess the best way to do this is to just change our perspective about such things and look at them from a different angle, see the positive side of it. When you start looking at things you dont like...changing what you can and accepting what you cannot - that is when miracles occur!! (ah..this really sounds so true. I should definitely try and imbibe this outlook)

"...Having yourself as a best friend has advantages. You cannot lie to yourself. You can be kind to yourself. You will not be lonely because in balance, you will not mind times when you are on your own..

"Disclaimer: Some excerpts are quoted from the article and rest of the views expressed are my own