Positive Health Online

In recent years, scientific medical studies have concentrated their focus on the effects of a joyful mind. The aim is to determine if blissfulness can maintain a person's good health and well-being. The studies are disclosing what wise sages have known for centuries …that a joy-filled mind will strengthen the immune system's resilience with regards to disease and supply all-over good health.

Even with all the new medical and spiritual information, people are less happy than previous generations. It seems the more affluent people become, the more misery they have to endure. Maybe many people surrender their joy in the expectation other people will return it to them.

• Do you live your life waiting for other people to lift your spirits?
• Are you dependent on shopping for luxury items to give you a quick fix of satisfaction?
• Do you need to be part of a social-set before you feel fulfilled in your personal self-esteem?
• Can you sit silently alone in a room, without reading a book, watching TV, talking to a friend or family member?
• Are you content and serene inside your own skin?

Many psychologists assert that human beings are social animals who can develop depression if they are not part of a social group. As with most modern psychotherapy I read, I differ in my approach in overcoming the emotions of depression and unhappiness.

Being part of a social group can make demands on a person's naturalness, and many times will alter their simplicity into a more unnatural sophistication.

Humanity has neatly packaged itself into different groups, tribes, religions, cultures and traditions. Most people have no choice in their conformity, because, by the time they reach seven years of age, the die has been cast and their reference points established.

However, once people mature and become fully fledged members of their clans, many inner feelings of dissent and discord can fester in the subconscious mind. These uneasy feelings can last a lifetime, but the person is powerless to break away for fear of retribution from the other clan members, who are mostly sensing the same uncomfortable pressures. Traditional habits are the most difficult to overcome, even though they may be pointless.

Before I go any further, I am not advocating that you should become a hermit. Rather, I am contending it may not be a good idea to allow your joy to be dependent on any outside forces. To segregate your happiness by a reliance on any other person's actions and emotions is to give up the powers of the joy you inherited at birth.

Here is a small sample list of the many ways you may be segregating your joy to other people in the hopes they will return the joy with interest.

1. Are you reliant on your child's success as a substitute for what you believe to be the failures in your own life's ambitions?
2. Do you live your life through the pages of the fashion magazines, always needing to keep up with the latest trends to feel worthy?
3. Are you trying to imitate your favourite film, TV or pop star, whilst longing for their fame and fortune?
4. Do you need an award or certificate to convey you are a success?
5. Are you dependent on a compliment to give you an air of self-value?
6. Do the perceptions in your faith, ideas within your spirituality or theories in your non-beliefs, contain any attached elements of fear or anxiety?
7. Are your digested, conditioned thought principles bringing all the rewards you should expect from them … i.e. health, wealth, comfort and happiness? If not, what useful purpose do they serve, if their performance is redundant and cannot relieve the stress of modern day living.

Throughout your life, significant circumstances will continually change for better or worse. However, the one real feeling that should grow moment by moment is your sense of joy. That can only be accomplished by a true sense of self… of who you are, and your rightful place on earth.

You belong right where you are located at any given moment in time, for you are an outgrowth of universal love that has evolved and created all you see, smell, touch and hear. During your lifetime, your bliss is your immortal treasure that conveys well-being and prosperity.

Beyond all your role-plays, you are an infinite bundle of joy packaged in a human body and mind that wants to explore all things material and tangible, whilst at the same time recognizing the identity of non-tangible blissfulness. Without this recognition, life will become meaningless and the search for happiness becomes a trivial pursuit that has no real rewards.

You cannot give your bliss away; you can only conceal it from your mind with the aid of your egos perceptions. So, enjoy your family, friendships, clans, religions, spirituality and culture, but never depend on any for your authentic joy…your joy is who you are, within every cell and molecule of your being.

Be at ease with the wisdom of knowing it is time to stop playing hide and seek with your happiness. It can never leave you without your permission to hide, and now you are aware it has nowhere to run.