Maggie about happiness

„Love yourself.“

How to be happy

In this part I would like to highlight the compassion as the main source of happiness as often repeated by His Holiness the 13th Dalai Lama.

I believe that we cannot be truly happy if we do not love ourselves. The self-compassion or self-love is crucial and from my experience actually one of the most difficult thing I am still working on to achieve and fully experience. It is the place where we should start, to accept ourselves with all the imperfections, to allow ourselves to feel good in our bodies, not to shy away and take any mean comments personally, to feel proud and in peace with what we have, not compering oursleves to others and feel the uniqueness as well as the normality of our being. To set an example and a concrete action, we can look at what and why we are trying to do to fit in our world. For I am a woman I can speak about putting a make-up on. There was a time, in my teenage years, where I had an immense difficulty to go out without a make-up on. I felt the urge to do that eventhough I knew how inconvinient it was. As I had realized it over time I knew It has to stop. Nowadays I only put make up on when I feel like it, not all the time and costs or because I am worried to show my face. It feels liberating and it is one of the step I made to accepting me completely.

From there we can extend the compassion and love to all other beings. We can actually start doing it right now. We can look at other people on the public transport for example, to observe them, but not to judge them, to imagine how many different lifes there is, how many different moments of joy and moments of pain. And to relalize that we do not have the right to judge, because we all have different starting lines and backgrounds. We are all equals.

This development of compassion and self-compassion will further extend our ability to feel grateful and humble, to see life from different perspectives, to accept ourselves and others, to be generous and caring and enjoy the life fully.

About Maggie

Name: Maggie
Gender: Female
Age: 25, Birth: 1993
Education: Bachelor degree or equivalent
Things making me happy:
passion | Nature | honest relationships

My life values

I value humility, gentleness, openness or honesty, the courage to show our weakness.

What does happiness means to me?

Happiness for me is a state of mind. It is not an intensive or an immense emotion. I think of it as a subtle state of appreciation of most of the aspects of our lives, but also calmness regardless of the current condition. The happines includes and should include wide range of emotions, from sadness to powerful joy and the key is not to set aside those emotions considered "negative" but accepting all that life is offering you and feel contempt about it. Not all of us have the power to go for whatever resonates with us the most and therefore I do not think that happiness is reserved only for the few of us that can. Sometimes you can even forget how happy you actually are, and for that reason it seems like happiness comes and goes, but I believe that this just means that only at the times you are truly present, you can experience it the most.

What does well-being means to me?

Well-being and satisfaction for me means more of something I mentioned in the previous answer to go for whatever that resonates with you. To hold on to your values thourough your life, whatever they are in the moment. They can change or they can stay the same. It should lead to happiness but it is not interdependent with it, it is not a condition. It means following your true desires, being open and honest about them with the people closest to you and the whole world as well.

What influenced me in relation to happiness?

I guess one of the main break-point in my life was when I found out about my boyfriend's infidelity. I had a choice to let him go and hate him forever or to stay with him and work on us both, as individuals and as a couple, to help us heal from our life wounds and to find our purposes. I had chosen the latter. I am truly proud that I had the courage and I started to appriciate myslef and work on my self-love more urgently than ever before. I know that I learned a lot in the process and that it was painful lot of the time, but I am grateful for the experience.

How I sacrifice my happiness to something else?

From the definition of happiness as I had set it I sacrifice it mostly when I judge others and myself, control myself and take personally what other people think about me, when I am not honest with myself or others or I am afraid to speak up.

In comparison I sacrifice my well-being and satisfaction when I am chosing the more convinient path. I am lazy to or to afraid to do what resonates with me the most.

My daily routine

I am still working on setting my daily routine as I would like to. At one point I did yoga everyday and I know I felt really positive about it, therefore I know I should come back to that. Now I am focusing more on the diet. As a type 1 diabetic I have always struggled with my illness and I know it contributed to my stress and self-judgment over the years.

If I would describe my ideal daily routine it would include daily yoga sessions (does not have to be really long or harsh), daily meditation or at least a moment of full presence, fullfilling and healthy diet and deepening of connection to other people.

Thoughts come to mind accidentally

My perception of happiness and well-being in time (%)