Pleasure versus satisfaction

 

PLEASURE  versus SATISFACTION 

(Manufacturing  (un)happiness)

By Abhijit Kamat,  www.stresguru.co.in

20 Feb 2011

Many of us manufacture our own unhappiness. It’s not that  all unhappiness is self created, as some situations we are in , that cannot be controlled. But 80% of the unhappiness is our own product.

It is said that happiness or unhappiness is the state of mind and surprisingly unhappiness is the most common state of mind. [It is a habit or mental formation (samkhara) of this life or the previous ones. Some mental formations or habits of the past lives are so strong, that the soul takes birth again  just to fulfill them in short span (due to very strong desires)].  One major thing responsible for producing unhappiness is DESIRE, want of something that we don’t have, if we have less we want more and more. If we have something we want a better quality product or branded one and so on. When we don’t get what we desire we try more and still if we don’t get we become desperate & unhappy.

Sometimes, our own unhappiness is distilled by saturating the consciousness with feelings of resentment, ill will,  and  hate. The unhappiness producing process  always makes important use of the ingredients of fear and worry. We are either in past, digging out old dirt of insults, anger and bad patches  or in the future worrying about imaginary failures and pains. Merely we are in present working out the plan on the basis of reality.

 

How to develop happiness Habit ?

1. Be aware of your feelings. (Our past mental formations dominate our consciousness.) Develop your awareness skills (consciousness and detachment). Most of the times we act under the influence of emotional hijack.
2. Learn to differentiate between pleasure and satisfaction. We all are the victims of  wanting more pleasure, that it has no end. We feel the pleasure through our senses. And our senses are always hungry. Pl. refer the following desires and evaluate yourself (with consciousness and detachment). If you feel enough, you are satisfied. If you feel the need of more, or some variation, you are looking for pleasures:= Wealth in all forms (money, property, gold, silver, furniture, electronic gadget), tasty food,  Sex, highly  branded clothes,  vehicles, toiletries, etc.
3. Evaluate in advance the negative thoughts that dominate your mind when you are disturbed, like:= anger, sadness, depression, death, debt, separation, guilt etc,  and be aware of them. Forewarned is forearmed.
4. Develop in our heart the habit to be happy. Make a mental list of happy thoughts and pass them several times throughout  a day. When you find some negativity entering in your mind, stop it there and replace it with positive thoughts.
5. Every morning before arising, release positive thoughts into your conscious mind while remaining in bed. Let a series of happy pictures of activities planned today pass through your mental eye. Do not affirm that things will not go well that day. .
6. If you do not get results as per your expectation, try again if there is one more chance or use let go approach and turn to the next one. Evaluate the failures. Forget the failures but learn the lesson.
7.  Have faith in something, God, nature, self-confidence, time,  strengths as it will come at the right time.

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