Road to happiness

Photography: Lucio Valmaggia

All human beings say we want to be happy, and when we make a toast we say: health, wealth and love! These are everyday wishes, but for some they come true while for others they don’t…

Happiness is neither a destination nor a goal to be reached, it is a road to be run, a process that starts at birth and ends when we take our leave.

Therefore creating a happy life implies taking these five points into account.

1. Learn to listen more to your heart and less to your mind. It is always one’s mind that doubts while your heart always knows, it is just that we are not used to listening to it.
2. Get in closer touch with your senses and savour the everyday little things in life: a hug, a dance, looking at length into the other’s eyes.
3. Develop the capacity to spend time in silence and on your own (which is not the same as being lonely). This is an essential practice since we cannot be happy with others if we cannot first live in peace and joy with ourselves.
4. Life is constant change, hence it is important to be flexible to change. So stay alert to the three mechanisms we tend to use to avoid change: Denial, Distraction and Blaming others.
5. If we want to achieve what we desire and enjoy the road, then we need to make ourselves masters of our emotions. This requires having the ability and the courage to express the whole gamut of emotions, since there is no evolution in repression, but only in expression.

To end with we pose this question to you: What are you going to do this week to create YOUR own road to happiness?