The ones that reject the so called “artificial stimuli”, those that promise to bring happiness instantaneously, are more likely to find real happiness. However, in recent decades, more and more people seek instant and miraculous solutions supposedly able to reduce the pains of life: medicines, food, shopping, parties, gambling.

The urgency of being completely immunized against suffering is such a priority that many are ready to put their health and finances at risk. But we must not forget that “the road is better than the destination”, and, more than the road, the way we enjoy the journey. However, for a significant portion of world population, the crossing of life ceased to be an exciting adventure and more of a torment.

In fact, sadness remains the same, a legitimate and necessary manifestation of the soul, we are the ones who change the way we approach it. Thus, instead of finding healthy ways to put this feeling out of your heart, whether doing some kind of therapy, exercising – generators of endorphins, the hormone of pleasure – or simply crying your head off and then lift the head and move on, some have preferred to treat the issue as a disease, or taking medication.

According to researches, sales of antidepressants doubled between 2005 and 2009. But even so, the population doesn’t seem to be any happier. In many cases, drugs do not work, possibly because of limited scope, since they act only increasing certain brain neurotransmitters such as serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine.

Nowadays, being happy has become a must. A challenge that we set in order to prove to ourselves and especially to others, that we are not weak character. In the struggle to avoid sadness, we resort to anything that takes us out of this condition of “failure”. What sometimes happen is a question of pride, plus the difficulty of dealing with conflict. As we need to look happy all the time, any sign of human sorrow put us on the intolerable situation.

We need to understand that happiness is not synonymous with joy and unhappiness is not the same as feeling sad. Confused? Don’t worry this knot is easily undone, with a minimum of logic and detachment. Any happy person can feel sad and any unhappy person can feel joy. That’s because the joy is an external aspect, from the individual’s relationship with the world, while happiness is a result of the relationship with yourself, so an internal factor.The pursuit of happiness outside of us also put us in a victim position and only brings more frustration. Nobody is protected from feeling sad. So, when something makes us sad, we can accept that this is part of life and not only happens to us. Thus, the distressing situations can be experienced with more serenity.

So get to work. Try to shorten the drama and stop debating on the same spot. Happiness is something that is built internally, it has to do with being alive and understanding the value of life. It is a sentiment that feeds on the small things.

For the French psychiatrist and psychotherapist Christophe Andre, author of Imparfaits Libres Et Heureux (Imperfect, Happy and Free), the key to fulfilment is to accept our imperfections with lightness and humor, an attitude that reveals a robust and healthy self-esteem.

According to the Indian doctor Deepak Chopra, even if circumstances are unfavorable, there is always something to be done. If not outside, certainly within us. This is the argument of the book The Ultimate Happiness Prescription: 7 Keys to Joy and Enlightenment.

See the seven principles outlined by the author and find out what points you can improve to be happier.

1) Pay attention to your body: your body and the universe are a single field of energy, information and awareness. When listening to your body with attention, you enter the field of infinite possibilities, where naturally you will find peace, harmony and joy.

2) Find the true self-esteem: The actual self is beyond appearances. Resides at a level of existence that is independent of other’s opinions, good or bad. When you align yourself to that source, you find a kind of happiness that no one can take from you.

3) Detoxify your life: emotions, habits, relationships and substances of toxic nature contaminate the body and mind. To detoxify your life, you must learn to reverse that. First, taking responsibility for your own actions. Then, recognizing and releasing your feelings so you can move forward.

4) Give up being right: all relationships deteriorate because of the confrontation between right and wrong. Giving up the need to be right does not mean giving up your views. Just adhere to the state of no defence, where there is no need to be attacked or attack and no need to be defended or defend.

5) Focus on the present: the present is the only time that is eternal. Never die, nor should it be forgotten. Therefore, in the here and now, happiness cannot be taken away from you.

6) See the world in yourself: the inner and outer worlds are mirrored. So if your consciousness vibrates in the frequency of love, this feeling will be both inside and outside of you. Thus, a flow of happiness and abundance will manifest when you have reached the deepest level of yourself.

7) Live for enlightenment: this is the most conscious state of existence and also the most natural because it is where you were originated. A place of love, peace and deep joy.

Unless you are a Vulcan like Mr Spock for whom logic is above emotion you are entitled to take your time to grieve. There are quite a lot of situations that can incite grief. Events such as the loss of a job, divorce, failing a test, missing out on a promotion, being mistreated by someone, moving far away from family, the death of someone you love and the list goes on and on.

No matter what it is, disappointment and losses are part of life and unfortunately nobody gave us a manual perfectly suitable for the unique “ME” on how to manage the psychological and emotional bit of us.

Each of us is a unique individual and as so we grieve differently in the “how” and “how long”. The most important thing you should understand is, don’t try to repress it because it will come back to you in its full force later on. Take your time cry and mourn but don’t be stuck. Instead learn from the experience and grow.

Why do some people take a knock-back from life and rise up again, while others sink into negative feelings? The answer is one word rarely used in everyday life, but essential for a happy life: resilience. This is the name given to the capacity to overcome obstacles and let them renovate you, coming out even stronger in the situation.

The term resilience has been adopted to describe those who adapt easily to change, take responsibility and face it with good attitude and energy.

What makes us resilient?

What leads people to cope with the grief with hope and come out of a painful situation – the death of a loved one or loss of a job – is the maturity gained through suffering. The resilient get stronger after each fight.

The good news it everyone can train to achieve resilience – by taking the following actions:

1. Composure

The secret lies in emotional balance. Being able to manage the emotions in an unexpected situation is a sign of maturity. The worse the situation, the greater the need to have a calm mind to make the right decision – a disturbed head does not solve problems.

What to do:

Before proceeding, take a deep breath to balance the heartbeat and calm down. Psychologists explain that this brief pause prevents the immediate reaction, possibly disastrous, giving time to see what to do being rational.

2. Flexibility

Things do not always go as you want, but who is flexible in the face of unforeseen reacts better and find alternative exits, sometimes even better than planned.

What to do:

Have a plan B. Imagine other paths to your goal. If one way did not work, have detachment and evaluate the good side of something new, in other words the unexpected.

3. Mood

Optimism soothes stress and helps you approach problems in a practical and positive, transforming grief into hope.

What to do:

To be in a good mood doesn’t mean you have to laugh all day, but keep an optimistic attitude, which can be developed to assume the role of the observer. Look at the situation as if you were not part of it: you have lightness and find new options.

4. Sociability

Studies by the American psychiatrist Steven Wolin revealed that: 35% of children with a history of abuse, starvation or hard lives that were able to overcome their hardship, were the ones easier to relate. We have to create bonds with those who give us strength and security.

What to do:

Cultivate your relationships. The secret is to show interest, be present and useful. What about using Facebook to remember your friends’ birthday?

Check this book “The Resilient Self”

“The strongest single factor in prosperity consciousness is self-esteem: believing you can do it, believing you deserve it, believing you will get it” Jerry Gillies – Writer

Self-Esteem has a huge impact in our lives. What you think about yourself and how comfortable you are with yourself determines how high or low is your self-esteem. Take a moment for a reflection.  Ask to yourself if you deserve the best and if you feel you are important. If you have answered ‘YES’- great, but do your thoughts, body language and actions say the same?

Don’t be afraid to have a high self-esteem thinking that you will turn into an insolent bossy arrogant person. Having a high self-esteem will make you feel good about yourself and others. People with high self-esteem have very high respect for others. They know we are here exchanging knowledge and experiences.

1. Accept Compliments

Don’t say it is nothing. Enjoy the compliment and say thank you. If someone is praising you it is because you deserve it. Be proud of you.

2. Pay Attention To Your Self-Talk

Psychologists reckon that we talk to ourselves around 60 thousand times a day. Self-talk is our internal dialogue, powerful messages that we transmit to our brains. It can be either invaluable or painfully destructive to our self-esteem. Stop right now the negative self-talk when your interior voice says “I can’t do this” or “I am not good enough”. Be vigilant and substitute them immediately to positive self-talk.

3. Avoid Negative People

Run away from people who are constantly criticising you. They will make you feel bad. Hang around with people who make you feel good about yourself. Optimistic and positive must be your choice for friends from now on.

4. Don’t Blame People or Events

Take responsibilities for your outcomes. You are in change of your life; you are the one who can make the difference. We reap what we sow!

5. Focus On The Present

Now is the only time we are in charge and we can make all the changes we want. The past is gone there is nothing you can do about it. The future is not here yet.

6. Stand Up Straight And Tall

Our body language affects immensely our self-esteem. If we stand up straight, stomach in, chest out, head up. We will certainly feel more confident.

“No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

Knowledge is a great ally we can have to help us in anything we want to achieve. If we buy a new washing machine, new model full of new functions, the best on the market we will need to learn how it works and all the programs it can perform otherwise we won’t have all the benefit that it offers to us. If we want to become an accountant or a good cook we will need to acquire the proper knowledge to do so. However, when it comes to how we, human beings, operate we don’t give much attention about it and just switch on the auto pilot and live our lives in the lowest level of our real capacity.

We can be addicted to certain emotions and even worse use the powerful tool of our thoughts to feed these addictions. Emotions like victimisation, feeling guilty and feeling unworthy are as addictive as cocaine or heroine and can destroy our lives just as much. Surprised? The chemistry behind the emotions starts in the brain where we have stored all our memories and experiences and also emotional inheritance from our parents.

If the addiction is to be a victim it is because we have a program running in our brain saying that we are a victim. It can be because we had experiences in the past that made us believe we are a victim in all situations. It can also be inherited from our parents. So every time we have an experience that reminds us of these past experiences our thoughts cause the brain to produce certain chemicals that are flushed into our body and bound in our cells. After doing it over and over again in our lives these cells get addicted to these chemicals and if they don’t receive their fix they will start to send signals to the brain asking for it. The next thing is that from anything we experience in our lives we will find a way to start thinking about something that will make us feel a victim and the cells will then have their fix. This process will go on and on.

Sound crazy? Let me give an example. Let’s say you are in a queue in the bank and when it is almost time to be served the cashier closes the till. This event will probably trigger thoughts of how things happens just with you and how it was always like this, everybody is unfair with you and then before you realise it you are experiencing victimization emotion and giving your cells a fix.

Now as our body is addicted to these chemicals we are always going to find a way to have a fix. This means that we are unconsciously going to search in our everyday life for every opportunity to feel this way. Just the same way when we buy a car or we know someone who bought a specific car model we are going to see it everywhere. Before we wouldn’t notice this model at all but now we tend to see it incredibly often. The same way, we scan for situations that is familiar to our past memories and experiences of victimisation or unworthiness or angriness or guiltiness.

Avalanches of chemicals can be triggered by a single thought. When our body is begging for a fix and sending signals to the brain we will suddenly remember something from the past and from a fine state we will change our mood in seconds to feel angry, a victim, unworthy or guilty.

That’s why some people spend years and years in abusive relationships and can’t get out or work in a job that makes them extremely unhappy. They are addicted to feeling like this and even if they break up the relationship or find another job they will end up in another similar situation.

As I mentioned before knowledge can make all the difference. If we make an effort to learn how our brains work we can transform our old selves into who we want to be. So next time you catch yourself having these thoughts to fix your addictions just interrupt them and think the opposite.

The chemical response is not as fast as the neurological response but a lot more worrying because it can be activated by a little thought. By just thinking about a stressing situation from the past or anticipating from the future our body will respond by realising colossal amounts of the hormones adrenaline and glucocorticoids or cortisol (as more known).

By flooding our system with these stress hormones our body will stop crucial activities like regeneration and repair, digestion, taking up glucose which may cause diabetes and our immune system will be put on hold. The immune system be put on hold means quiet a disaster to the body defences as it will stop to fight against virus and bacteria what will lead to infections and illness. An efficient immune system can detect and get rid of cancer cells in their very early stages. Unfortunately cancer cells multiply merciless quickly.

Stress is now part of our lives and our body is prepared to take some stress but if we are constantly in the survival mode our body won’t be able to cope simply because we are not designed to live in the stress mode all the time. No matter if we are running from a bear trying to save our lives or having a stressful thought like worrying about trying to meet deadlines. The body respond in exactly the same way. All important activities are put on hold.

How about our heart? Again no matter if the stress is physical or just a thought in our mind the response is the same. So what happens when we see a bear in front of you in the woods? Our heart beat increases and our blood pressure rises to store energy and send to our legs to run and our arms to fight. We don’t need to be brilliant to conclude that we will be keeping our heart beats high causing arrhythmia, tachycardia and high blood pressure.

In the stress mode even if we eat healthily it won’t help us much as our digestives system is compromised and it can’t metabolize the food properly. Even exercising is not as effective to relief stress if your emotional state is heavily addicted to the stress mode.

Recent studies showed that as much as 90% of people visit their doctors because some physical illness related to stress. The pain in the shoulder, the migraine, the stomach-ache or the high cholesterol just to name a few can be related to stress.

Stress also causes a lot of pain and why is that? All the adrenaline and cortisol that were released to our muscles to optimize our flee from the bear will not be used, will it? So they sit in our tissues making the muscles contract causing tightness and hardness and ultimately a lot on pain.

Sleepless nights caused by stress and again caused by our star hormones adrenaline and cortisol released to our system so we can be in a state of alertness to face the horrible bear but there’s not bear in the bedroom and still we are prepared to face it. During those precious hours of sleep the body repair and restore itself. The immune system recharges, our organs are restored, new cells come to life to replace the old ones and our minds relax giving our subconscious the chance to manifest its power through new ideas, realization and inspiration.

With the modern life came stress and now we know that it is part of our lives. The key point is to keep it in control. The frequency we experience stress is going to make all the difference. If we get addicted to be stressed and it becomes our default mode then we are depraving our bodies to restore and preserve life. Occasionally stress is normal and our body can cope well. So there is an urge for us to examine our lives and stop right now to live in the survival mode.

Anger is one of those very powerful feelings that we have to keep an eye on all times. Anger can dominate and slowly destroy your relationship with family and friends, sabotage your professional life and jeopardise your ability to connect with people in general. Anger can also cause physical illness. A study made by psychologist Stephen Bruehl, Ph.D. showed that chronic pain is associated with expressed and repressed anger. So no matter if we expressed or repressed it we will get the consequences. The American Academy of Neurology Journal published that people who had strokes experienced anger at least 2 hours before the stroke.

Learning and understanding the functioning of a certain feeling can help us to keep it in control and free us from addiction. Yes, that’s right addiction. Do you know that we can get addicted to certain feelings the same way we can get addicted to drugs? Every time we experience anger strong chemicals called peptides are released into our brain and they literally dock in our receptor cells. This process causes an intense avalanche of biochemical actions. As a result we became addicted to this discharge of chemicals meaning that we at some level feel a morbid pleasure to these reactions.

Once addicted and UNAWARE of the whole process behind it we have no choice but to repeat it over and over again until it gets to a point of exhaustion. At this point we can’t change or control our anger because we are trapped in the vicious cycle of stimuli and responses.

Once we are AWARE of what is happening we can regain control of the situation using the power of observation. Through observation you can start looking closely into your anger patterns and start changing your behaviour radically and consistently until it is permanent without effort. If we can’t do it by ourselves let’s seek help before it is too late.

Ask yourself this question: Can I control my anger? If not, you are addicted. You can ask this same question to check all other feelings and find out if you are addicted to any of them.

Richard Gross in his book ‘Psychology The Science of Mind and Behaviour’ says: “Mr Spock in Star Trek often points out to Captain Kirk how much energy human beings waste through reacting emotionally to things, when a more logical and rational approach would be more productive. But would we be human at all if we didn’t react this way?”

“It’s not the strongest of the species nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” – Charles Darwin

A crucial truth we have to completely embrace about life is, nothing is static or linear. Life occurs in waves or cycles. Just look at all kinds of charts on inflation, unemployment rates, interest rates, stock market, etc. Life occurs like the waves in a chart, some up and some down with a support level. If we were to make a chart on our lives called the ‘happiness rates’ it would not be linear would it? The key point is to place our support level line in such a way that the ups and downs are not so steep.

One of the best definitions of the term ‘problem’ I have ever read was “a problem is a situation in which there’s a discrepancy between the present state and some goal state, with no obvious way of reducing it”. It is vital to keep in mind that there is always a solution even if it is not obvious. We just have to look for it with an open mind.

Be flexible and adaptable, changes are inevitable. Just think about all the changes in communication since the invention of the telephone. The speed of change will be quicker and quicker. So let’s fasten our seat belts and be flexible and adaptable. When facing a problem explore every possible solution even if it appears rather weird at the time, just brainstorm and write down everything that comes to your mind.

Try the solutions you have brainstormed and follow the trial-and-error route until you succeed. Use your intuition it is always a very powerful tool. The best way to do so is by asking yourself: “What is the best move to make in order to overcome the discrepancy?” Let it incubate for some time and remember what Einstein so wisely said: “Imagination is more important than knowledge”.

Past experiences are also a good source to even-out the discrepancy. Use events from the past that would help you with this new situation. It could be something that happened either to you or someone you know. Try also to distance yourself from the discrepancy and pretend you are the advisor. We always show more wisdom when we are giving advice.

Be very wary of the thought ‘I am OK, the problem is everyone else’s’. This is very tricky because we have a tendency to see what is outside a lot more than we see our most recondite feelings, thoughts and emotions. That’s fine! It must be God’s fault as He put our eyes facing the outside. WRONG! We can close our eyes more often and meditate and we will see those recondite areas and have some answers thrown out.

Be humble seek some advice and feedback. Talk to somebody you trust listen to what he or she has to say and be receptive and do not be prejudiced. If what you have tried before is not working try something new even if you think it is not going to work. Keep trying until you eliminate the discrepancy.