The Way to Happiness (Category J)
While no ideas can guarantee happiest life for anyone, applying rules to one’s life can elevate his/her life to much better level. It is not only our job to apply these rules ourselves, but also guide others to do this.
1. Take care of yourself
Get care when you are ill - Illness can harm both self and society. So, take utmost care of yourself when you are ill.
Keep your body clean - Dirtyness is the largest reason for illness. Keeping self clean freshens the surrounding and gives happiness.
Preserve your teeth - Brushing after every meal or having chewing gum after every meal protects teath decay.
Eat properly - Eat nourished food properly. This gives necessary stamina and energy to chase our dreams.
Get rest - Tired people aren’t alert, can make mistakes, have accidents. They are risk to themselves and others.
2. Be Temperate
Do not take harmful drugs - Drugs breaks person both physically and mentally. Encourage people to come out it.
Do not take alcohol to excess - Drinking can take lives in more ways than one.
With above two rules, one becomes more physically fit to enjoy the life.
3. Don’t be promiscuous
A lot of pleasure can come from sex: nature intended it that way so the race could go on. But misused or abused, it carries with heavy penalties and punishments: nature seems to have intended in that way also.
- Be faithful to your sexual partner - Urge of the moment can become the sorrow of lifetime. Sex is a big step on the way to happiness and joy. There is nothing wrong with it if it is followed with faithfulness and decency.
4. Love and help children
Today’s children will become tomorrow’s civilization. A child is little bit like a blank slate, it reflects whatever you write on it. However, as child grows, it learns to write on its own by observing the surroundings. One has to make up his mind what he is trying to get the child to become: this is modified by several things:
What the child basically can become due to inherent make-up and potential?
What the child really wants to become?
What one wants the child to become?
The resources available.
All this adds up to, the child will not survive well unless he or she eventually becomes self reliant and very moral. Otherwise, the end product is likely to be a liability to everyone including the child. It will be no accident if the child goes wrong: it is sum total of society’s and parent’s act that has caused this.
One way to help child is to become a friend of him. Try to find out what his problem really is, and without crushing their own solutions, try to solve them. Listen to what children tell you about their lives. Let them help you. A child factually does not do well without love. Most children have abundance of love to return.
5. Honor and help your parents
There are differences between generations. Children can reconcile their differences with their parents. Before any shouting begins, one can at least try to talk it over quietly. It is often possible to attain compromise where both sides now understand and agree.
In spite of all, one must remember that they are the only parents one has. And as such, no matter what, one should honor them and help them.
6. Set a good example
Others around you can’t help but be influenced by your good deeds, no matter what they say.
7. Seek to live with the truth
One can solve problems of existence only when he has true data. False data often misleads people. Think your own way through things, accept what is true for you; discard the rest. There is nothing unhappier than one who tries to live in a chaos of lies.
Do not tell harmful lies - They can ruin lives. They create a kind of trap into which the teller and the target both fall. Interpersonal and social chaos can result. One should learn to detect them and reject them.
Do not bear false witness
8. Do not murder
The stupid, the evil and the insane seek to solve their real or imagined problems with murder. And they have been known to do it for no reason at all.
9. Do not do anything illegal
Almost any worthwhile thing one is trying to accomplish often can be done in perfectly legal ways. The state and government tends to be rather unthinking machine. The rightness and wrongness of things do not count in face of laws and codes of laws. Only the laws count. Adhere to principle that all men are equal under law.
10. Support a government designed and run for all the people
Government organized and conducted solely for self-interested individuals and groups gives society a short life span. Opposition to such governments usually just brings on more violence. There are several governments in the world that are falling only because their people express silent disagreement by not cooperating.
On other hand, when government is obviously working hard for all its people, one should support it to the limit. It is, after all, the people and their own opinion leaders who sweat and fight and bleed for their country - a government cannot bleed, it cannot even smile: it is just an idea men have. It is the individual person who is alive - you.
11. Do not harm a person of good will
Factually, the society runs on men and women of good will. Such people are easy to attack: their very decency prevents them from overprotecting themselves. Yet the survival of most of the individuals in society depends upon them.
Strong measures should be taken to defend them and protect them from harm. Own’s, family’s and friend’s survival depends on them.
12. Safeguard and improve your environment
Be of good appearance - An environment disfigured with unkept people can have subtle, depressing effect on one’s morale. Encourage people around you to look good by complimenting them when they do or even gently helping them with their problem when they don’t. It could improve their self regard and their morale as well.
Take care of your own area - A little time spent getting organized can pay off in speeded work; it is not waste of time some believe. To protect your own possessions and places, get others to take care of theirs.
Help take care of the planet - Although one cannot prevent others from doing harm to planet, even if one only had a opinion that it was just not a good thing to wreck the planet and mention the opinion, one would be doing something.
13. Do not Steal
When one does not respect the ownership of things, his own possessions and property are at risk. Stealing is really just an admission that one is not capable enough to make it honestly.
14. Be worthy of trust
Mutual trust is the firmest building block in human relationships. Without it, whole structure comes down. Trustworthiness is highly valued commodity. When one has it, one is considered valuable. When one has lost it, one may be considered worthless.
- Keep your words once given - Those who break their word, often never get another chance. Once he fails to live upto a promise, he will have to provide guarantee, warrantee and all other proofs for his trustworthiness.
15. Fulfill your obligations
Always fulfill your obligations and discourage a person from incurring more obligations than it is possible for him to actually discharge or repay.
16. Be industrious
Morale is boosted to hights by accomplishment. Sorrow itself can be eased simply by getting busy at something. Idle people are more dangerous. Get them some work to keep them engaged.
17. Be competent
In common pursuits and activities, man respects skills and ability. The test of true comptence is end result. To the degree that man is competent, he survives. To the degree that he is incompetent, he perishes.
Encourage the attainment of competence in any worthwhile pursuit. Compliment it and reward it, when you find it. Demand high performance standards. The ingredients of competence include observation, study, and practice.
Look - See what you _see_; not what someone else tells you that you see. Look at life and things and others directly, not through set of prejudices, curtain of fear, or interpretation of others. Observe what you _observe_. Instead of arguing with someone, get them to look. What they find is usually obvious when they see it. Then they can go and handle things. But if they don’t see it themselves, observe it for themselves, it may have little reality for them; all rules, orders, and punishments in the world will not resolve their problem. One can indicate what direction to look and suggest that they do look: the conclusions are up to them. True competence is based on one’s own ability to observe.
Learn - Separating false data from the true brings about understanding. The main process of learning consists of inspecting the available data, selecting the true from the false, important from unimportant, and arriving thereby at conclusions one makes and can apply. The test of any “truth” is whether it is true for you. If you can’t see the results, reject it. If you like, carry it further, and conclude what “truth” is for you. The process of learning is not just piling data on top of more data. It is one of obtaining new understandings and better way to do things. If one cannot get those around him to study and learn, one’s own work can become much harder and even overloaded and one’s own potential of survival is at risk.
Practice - Learning bears fruit when it is applied. Wisdom of course, can be pursued for its own sake: there is even a kind of beauty in it. But, truth told, one never really knows if his understanding works or not, until he sees results of trying to apply it. Without working each movement, unless doing it over again and again until one can get it done without thinking and get it done with speed and accuracy, one can set stage for accidents. The least practiced has most mistakes. Theory and data blossom only when applied and applied with practice. Get people to look, study and work it out and then do it. And when they have it right, get them to practice, practice, practice until they can do it like a pro.
18. Respect religious beliefs of others
Tolerance is a good corner stone on which to build human relations. In this sea of contention, one bright principle has emerged: he right to believe as one chooses. Faith and belief do not necessarily surrender to logic: they cann’t even be declared illogical. They can be things quite apart. One is at the liberty to hold onto his beliefs for acceptance. One is at risk when he seeks to assault beliefs of others.
19. Try not to do things to others that you would not like them to do to you
This negative declaration of Golden rule gives a basis for one to identify what is right and wrong.
20. Try to treat others as you would want them to treat you
This positive declaration of Golden rule gives a basis for one to identify what is good and bad. Joy and pleasure donot come from immortality, they come from honest hearts. Once can influence the conduct of others around him. The pebble dropped into the pool, can make ripples to the furthest shore.
21. Flourish and Prosper
Efforts to improve oneself, to become happier in life, can become subject of attacks. The real handling of such situation, and such people; the real way to defeat them, is to flourish and prosper. Happiness lies in engaging worthwhile activities. But there is only one person who for certain can tell what will make one happy - oneself.
Sometimes, with all care, some mistakes do happen. One should just learn from these and carry on. Who said roads donot have bumps? It can still be traveled. So, people fall down: It doesn’t mean that they can’t get up again and keep going.