Happiness – An amazing feeling within our reach

Happiness is a pleasant feeling that everyone wants. Happiness is an amazing feeling liked by all irrespective of age differences. Only superficial meaning as possible while attempting to define happiness. It looks so simple to talk about happiness but very complexed when going into a deeper sense. Everyone gets confused with the answer to the question “Are u really happy”. Aim of this article is to create an insight over our efforts to attain the real sense of happiness.

Happiness covers the positive reflections like contentment, satisfaction, joy, cheeriness, enjoyment, delight and carefreeness. Happiness can be felt in a shorter or longer version. Short term happiness is unstable and exists for a short span of time as the name suggests. Some of the apt words to indicate the short term happiness are pleasure, ecstasy, cheeriness and joy. Meeting with friends, watching a match and celebrating a festival may get us short term happiness.

Long-term happiness is attained by feeling happy about our purpose in life, the success and satisfaction accomplished. It is based on concepts not just generated by a single event. Contentment, satisfaction, well-being and carefreeness are some of the indicators of long term happiness. This is the real and strong sense of happiness. But unfortunately not achieved by many. Short term happiness brings a lot of excitement and immediate satisfaction. Long term happiness requires a lot of efforts and sacrifices to be achieved. One must understand the importance of sacrificing short term happiness in order to achieve the long term.

Unique features of happiness

·          Happiness is within us. It is not acquired. It is a purely individualised feeling

·          Scale of measurement of happiness is different from one to another. Not the same incidents or events can get happiness for all. It differs from individual to another

·          Money is not enough to get adequate happiness. Many times it is mistaken

·          It is not necessary that achievements and success make someone happy always

·          Happiness can be shared. Individual who is happy by himself never contain it within himself

·          Expression of happiness differs from one to another. Expecting the same kind of reaction from everyone is wrong.

Suggestions to make ourselves happy

·          Set the scale of measurement of happiness with attainable criteria

·          Learn the technique of balancing between the shorter and longer version of happiness

·          Share the success and achievements with our friends and known

·          Utilise the supportive system while facing the challenges than alone

·          No need for wild celebrations with our achieved status. Because there is always a pressure to maintain the achieved status

·          Do not miss the chances of serving the humankind. Happiest moments of life used to be attained by the blessings of the poor and needy.

Happiness and music also connected. When some one is happy - he sings, when sad – he listens. Singing is always higher than listening. Many are struggling to find happiness by setting the wrong scale of measurements. Try to find the happiness with available resources around us, no need to run behind something or someone.

“Earn your own happiness by being the reason for some one’s happiness”

Suicide never be an option for a solution

Life is so simple to lead when the ‘needs’ are fulfilled. It is getting complicated when the needs are converted into ‘wants’. Needs always stick with the basic requirements of life. 'Wants' set higher standards and lead to demands. There is always pressure while meeting the demands of wants in life. When the demands are too high or hopeless to reach then there is a failure. Frustration out of failure badly affects the equilibrium and suicide may be considered as an extreme option for a solution.

Not all days bring happiness or make us sad. Every day offers new opportunities and brings the challenges too. Challenges or problems in life are very common. Almost they are unavoidable. Unfortunately, most of the challenges in our day to day life are invited by us. Knowingly we are entering into the problems since the immediate pleasure outclasses the long term complications. 

Satisfaction scale of life differs from individual to another. Some are happy with what they have, some never stop. They need more and more. It is like running behind with never-ending aspirations. It generates a lot of pressure on the journey of life. One among the unhealthy mechanism to handle the pressure is suicide.

Suicide results as a pathological effect in mentally ill cases. Depression is a common cause. Almost all kind of psychotic patients has the risk of developing suicidal tendencies. It is a challengeable role for mental health professionals to deal with such cases. But the sad fact is that the state of mind of normal individuals triggered to self-harm while handling the pressure of life.

Statistics related to Suicide

·          800 000 people die by suicide every year. Furthermore, for each suicide, there are more than 20 suicide attempts.

·          Globally, suicide rates in men are just over twice as high as for women. 

·          The global suicide rate for women was 6.3 deaths per 100,000; for men, it was just over twice that figure at 13.9 per 100,000 in 2017.

·          India has the highest suicide rate in the South-East Asian region, according to the World Health Organization’s latest report.

·          India also had the third-highest female suicide rate (14.7) in the world after Lesotho (24.4) and Republic of Korea (15.4).

There are many reasons for suicide. It depends upon the person who experiences the pressure. Plenty of reasons are listed out in the literature related suicide but the underlying fact is that the person opts suicide as a solution to negotiate the pressure. It is an unhealthy extreme mechanism to tackle reality. 

Easy ways to avoid the pressure which may lead to suicidal tendencies:

·          Understand the meaning of life. Rich lifestyle or money won’t get enough happiness or peace in life.

·          Gain satisfaction in what we have. No need for generating extra pressure by running behind what we want more than required.

·          Don’t compare some one’s achievement with us. Before comparing the achievements try to analyse the difference between him and us.

·          Try to live life in reality than fantasy. Real-life is not a Bollywood movie.

·          Find happiness by doing good or help the person in need, not on luxury and glamour.

·          Face the failures and challenges of life-based on reality. Your failure may not be an end of something, but a starting point of many other options. 

·          Learn to communicate effectively. Communication is the greatest advantage of everyone to overcome any kind of issues.

·          Remember the fact you are not alone, there are so many in the world are facing the same kind of pressure what you undergo or more than that.

·          Parents should encourage the children for socialisation by setting them as an example. 

·          Come forward to solve the inner conflicts with the help of mental health professionals or at least express it to the friends or group they attached.

Suicide or suicidal tendencies are a growing concern in an advanced society. The common belief in the society is like, the suicides or suicidal tendencies can be prevented or treated only by mental health professionals. But the fact is, One affectionate word, One affectionate hug, One affectionate look, One affectionate smile, One affectionate touch is more than enough to prevent someone from the extreme step. There is nothing more than the happiest feeling by saving a life. Remember you and I can do it. 

“Suicide never be an option for a solution”

Personal space – Essential to care the ‘self’

Personal space is a concept which emerged as a major arena for discussion in contemporary psychology. Man is a social animal. This is the classical statement belongs to sociology. Humans live in groups. Groups consist of families. Families have their members who share specific roles to play. Though every member is interacting and depending on each other to satisfy and meet their needs, all have their personal life too.

Everyone has 3 faces in a practical sense. One face is known to everyone in society. Here all of our positives are known than our negatives because all hide their weaknesses and reflects only their positives. The second face is known to our closed circle like family, relatives and friends. The third face is known only to self. To satisfy the third face, one needs time for self to think and act. This very personal time makes someone to keep a distance from everyone around him or her and identified as “Personal space”.

Personal space should be respected by couples with each other. The family itself a unit and unity is an unwritten law for successful running. Modern families are mostly nuclear. Responsibilities are shared between the couples and needed for self-satisfaction too. Personal space is needed to keep them satisfied and balance their mental health. 

Most of the individuals are maintain personal space by spending time with social media. It is an argumentative area whether remaining in social media makes someone better or worse. It is purely personal and not the same answer for everyone. Technology makes it easy to bring all connections in our hands. Only secrecy and security is the question mark. The need for personal space felt from teenage to the end of life.

Importance of personal space 

• Offer him or her to do the own interesting activities
• Opportunity for self-satisfaction
• Refreshing experience
• Chance to analyse and identify our interests 
• Minimise the friction between the family members 
• Mark of respect among couples
• Perfect time for self-analysis
• The best way for relaxation 

Effects of excessive personal space

• May leads to overthinking
• Introverted personalities often go into personal space and hesitate to come out
• Too much personal space leads to social isolation
• Create the wrong stimulus like suicidal tendencies among unstable personalities
• Utilised for wrongdoings like plotting criminal activities

Personality playing a major role. Personal space finds more among the introverts. They are more comfortable by keeping them away from others. Anyone who maintains too much personal space should be assessed for mental defects. 

Overall, the success of life depends upon the ability to maintain our equilibrium. Personal space offers everyone to meet their own self based needs. 3rd face of life needs to be taken care well. All need to understand and accept the personal space of others and balance life better.

Learning

Familiarise the unfamiliar

Bad always first and good follows later

Faster in young and slow at old

Can be formal or casual

Possible by choice and chance

Makes the unknown to known

                                    

                                             - Comfort gate

A Common man's view on Covid-19

Time has come to think about post-pandemic life. All countries, all firms, all organisations, all institutions and all productive units drafted their plans to move on. So many reconstructive plans, relief mobilisations, stimulus packages have got introduced. All eyes are eagerly aiming for the normalcy. I am still in confusion whether we moved out of this pandemic or moving with.

For the past around three months, I lost my interest to watch the News on TV and the internet. With the angle of mental health view, I find it is so much annoying. So much hype, like a live cricket score the numbers are shown on the top or bottom of the screen. It is panicking the public instead of alert and aware of them.

So much of voice and noise raised over this pandemic. Still, we are not getting a shred solid evidence about the origin of this pandemic. Only the web of hypothesis from non-veg market to bio labs is going on. A lot of political stunts in almost all nations between ruling and opposition took and taking place concerning this. We are not certain about the gainers and losers till the next elections. 

Lockdown was the only option for the leaders to control at the initial stages. There was a huge debate between ‘Life or Livelihood’. The trend goes like this, life at the initial phase and livelihood at the later stage. Slow down the intensity of lockdown is the evidence for that. Still, the struggle is going on.

Not all the businesses got lost. Many productive units turned into health care products providers within no time and witnessed abnormal bulge in the price of basic safety products like masks. But then a large scale of production and competition brings them down at the same pace as it got high. Corona makes some millionaires within a short time.

New trends are getting into the functioning units. Concept of work from home cemented its place now. Thanks to technological advancements. Traditional work policies and practices forcibly changed. Whether you like or not but you have to, no other choice as an employee. Needs to learn to be successful in any kind of work atmosphere, home or office. 

Sad to watch the issues related to migrant workers. Once again it has got proved that life for the poor is so much hard. The abundance of business units, lack of availability of food, fear of pandemic attack and uncertainty over future made them walk for miles. As a result, witnessed some heartbreaking incidents like deaths due to starvation and physical strains.

Well, as a positive aspect I would say the family as a unit got some time together. Fathers got a chance to participate in household works, working mothers got the chance to try for new recipes, children got an opportunity to enjoy the company of their parents. Above all, the family met the emotional needs of each other and proved the strongest basic unit in life. 

Overall, the present corona pandemic is going to be history soon. Only time can tell us the decisions made now are right or wrong. As usual, let us be positive and hopeful!!

Faith

More than a belief

Build up on trust

Purely based on feelings

Extreme level of satisfaction

Too difficult to develop

Never easy to convert

                                                   - Comfort gate