The costume of happiness

What is happiness? It seems that society has made the perfect recipe for happiness… Everywhere you go there’s something you can buy to achieve that happiness right? Yes, of course, we can buy stuff that makes us happy for a few hours, perhaps a few days. Hopefully, we buy things that are meaningful to us and reflect our personality and inner-self.
Buying happiness is like a drug. You buy and buy stuff, it never seems enough. If we don’t make the effort of cultivating inner happiness in our daily life, we won’t be happy in the ordinary moments.

On the other hand, we can’t fool ourselves pretending we need to be happy all the time. Social media has been a great tool to highlight our happiest moments. It can be a great tool to inspire people but also to make them believe our life is perfect. Is it really? There’s so much more to accept about ourselves, about the meaning of life, our fears, depression, anxiety and more. We need to remember that everybody is posting their best moments on their social media feeds… No many would post pictures of themselves feeling frustrated or angry. However, we all live those moments. Even yoga instructors 😉 we all face the same roller coaster of emotions (especially when you’re a mom of a 2-years-old kid, living abroad away from family).

Everyone is learning how to cope with their own fears. Some of us might find many distractions and activities to do in order to hide from our own fears and doubts. It is only when we pause for a moment to open our hearts and stay still while taking mindful deep breaths, that we become more aware of our true nature. That’s the moment we start understanding the meaning of true happiness, which to me is more about a sense of harmony or inner peace (it’s what brings me back to the mat over and over).

It is important to allow ourselves to experience dark emotions though. Once we experience them, we need to let them go and recognise that we can always come back to our true nature by taking deep breaths and living in the present moment focusing more on what we already have or on the things we can actually do to make us happy again.

From my point of view, seeing and treating ourselves and others with love and kindness is one of the most important steps to achieve a longlasting sense of happiness in our life. What do you think?