Everyone wants to be happy. Regardless of who you are or where (or when) you were born, happiness is one of those things that all humans desire. The United States has it written into our constitution: “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The question remains, however, as to how we actually go about pursuing and achieving this often-unrealized state of happiness?
When you consider all of the emotional states that one can feel and consider, a vast majority of the negative ones are anchored in the past or predicting the future. Grief, envy, guilt and shame often come to light when we are analyzing past events. Anxiety, fear, doubt, and stress are all present in the mind when we think about the future. What are some emotions that occur in the present moment? Things like calmness and affection, contentment and relaxation.
“For human beings, simply put, the default state is happiness,” our author writes. If you’ve ever spent time with babies and toddlers, you know this to be true. They don’t have the mental capacity to consider what’s going to happen to them tomorrow because they are already overwhelmed with experiencing the present. Obviously, there’s a fair amount of crying and fussing, but as long as their most basic needs are met, they are freely emoting, experiencing joy and sadness as it happens, fully connected to what is transpiring in their immediate, tangible life. They are the perfect example of happiness.
A website called Trackyourhappiness.org ran a study with more than fifteen thousand participants, collecting more than 650,000 reports, and presented a profound discovery: regardless of what people were doing at any given time, they were noticeably happier when they were fully present. “It didn’t matter if it was a pleasant, a neutral, or an unpleasant thought; when they were focused outside the present, people were less happy. Period.”
This book review is short because the answer to being happy is to live in the present moment. While sometimes this is not easy, it really is that simple.