What is the secret....

I think to be truly happy you have to first accept the fact that you can not ever help everybody n your lifetime. You can't even help most of the people most of the time without compromising or limiting your availability to your nuclear fmaily and friends. As a mother your children would barely see you, as a wife your husband would be lonely, as a friend your comrads would sorely miss you, as a sister/aunt/daughter you would be absent in their lives.

If you can accept that you do the best you can to please and help all the people you can without hurting or leaving anyone you know and love in the process, I beleive you can truly be happy. If everyone did all they could, then everyone would get some relief and help with theirrespective situations from someone who wants to be there and can be there without the burden of letting down or hurting someone else in the process.

I guess I don't think its possible to be happy 100% of the time. That's not a bad thing-- I think its easier to apreciate a good day after a hard day.

I'd think you'd need to have a mix between focusing on you and focusing on others. When you do one or the other would probably depend on the situation and the person. But just thinking of others will not make you happy and just thinking of yourself will not make you happy. There has to be a mix.

To kaerbear:

My secret to a happy life is God! He makes me happy when I am sad with His blessings and then He tests me with difficult times. He has always been with me in my life. The moments when I struggled, He showed me the light. He guides me through darkness. He is the One and Only True Friend in my life. I love Him and He loves me more than I love Him.

Yes, we live in a selfish world. People are becoming more and more self-centered. People are running after money, power, and possession. The husband has no time for the wife nor does the wife cares for the husband. The son leaves the mother in old home and the mother is busy with the difficulties of life and has no time for the son.

"So many awful things going on.........". I wish I could stop those awful things. I can only wish......... People no more care about each other. We all are becoming materialistic and true love and friendships are becoming rarer and even rarer. May be the school students will have to answer questions like "what is the rarest thing in the world?" in a quiz in near future! The answer probably will be true love and caring, not that that's not the right answer even now.

Even I have many people in my life that always put me off. I ignore them or directly tell them I don't appreciate their behavior and I believe that's the best think to do. I can't make everyone happy and there will always be some who will never be happy with me no matter how much I try. By saying that I am not holding others to be guilty because may be I am not good enough.

I focus on being honest more than making others happy. I don't like flattery and sometimes people hate me merely because I speak what I have in my heart. Once again, I am not claiming I am the good or perfect one. I can always be wrong. Kindness and forgiveness are also two extremely important qualities that we need to have in us to make others happy.

I believe happiness comes through helping others not with money. The happiness that comes from money is only an illusion. Yes, we sometimes need to focus on our own happiness and it's possible to do that without hurting others even though it's sometimes very difficult to do that.

At the end of the day, it's God that I turn to for ultimate bliss and He it is whom I thank for the good times that he blesses me with.

Finally, it's a very nice topic to discuss on. Thank you for coming up with such a nice topic and sorry for the boring religious talks!

God bless you!

I think it is helpful to find true hapiness within yourelf. Some believe that true happiness can be found through religion, spirituality, nature, or physical activity. It can be found in friendhips, intimacy, loving children, and respect for one's family.

For me happiness comes from wishing for the hapiness of thers. There is a meditation practice called "taking and giving" wherein you visualize taking away the suffering of others, which can be visualized by a dark, grey smoke, and in turn sending them a true wish for happiness, visualized by a blue or golden light. For me, the act of loving kindness brings me true happiness. To ripen and liberate myself through the development of lovingkindness, I may in turn nourish all beings with an unceasing banquet of pure delight.

Of course, this is easier to say than it is to practice. So often we forget our true purpose and get wrapped up in self cherishing. This is when I personally falter and beccome discouraged.

To be happy, one must cease learning, a person anyway.

Ignorance is bliss, and wisdom is sadness.

And to have as little life experience as possible, just stay in your shelter.

But unfortunately the older you get and the more experience you have as a person, the sadder you will be, like a pendulum or that trap in indiana jones with the spikes coming out of the walls.

Or you could try being a sociopath, which seem to be the most happy people on the planet, or perhaps a megolomaniac, they seem happy as well.

I think that the only inch of happy a person can have is simply fighting the hate and the pain and the ingnorance and the greed with all of your might, whatever you can muster. It isn't easy at all, but it's the only way to have an actual smile any of the time, don't pay any attention to those other smiles, they only look like smiles.