Henry Bantjez (M.Psych.)
Often, life takes unexpected turns, and you wonder what happened to the sunshine because every step feels like crossing a busy street in a rainstorm. You lose your job or a loved one.
Problems with neighbours. Your circle of friends shrinks, and you feel lonely as a cloud. The one that you thought was the one cheats on you. You don’t feel so healthy anymore. You feel depressed. You are angry and harbour grudges and regret. The list goes on. These outcomes cause pain and confusion and make you wonder: what is the meaning of life anyway?
Philosophers such as Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Kierkegaard, and Aristotle dedicated their lives to answer the question with different viewpoints, but, in my opinion, His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, gives us a very simple answer, and this is going to change your life. The meaning of life is to be happy and useful. This means happiness is not just about you. Happiness is also achieved through helping others (being useful).
The question is not to know what the meaning of life is but what meaning you can give to your life. He goes on saying that to lead a life with meaning, you need to cherish others, pay attention to human values and to cultivate inner peace.
Being hung up on and attached to the pain that life dishes out on heaped plates and focussing on your weaknesses and not embracing your strengths or withdrawing from friends and family will most certainly lead to a state of discontent. And the cost is suffering. But if you can view suffering not as a setback but as an opportunity to test yourself, this could be a step toward comprehending happiness, but it requires deep reflection.
It took me almost two years to realise that my parents’ deaths had meaning. It taught me lessons on acceptance, coping, gratitude and letting go. Something I have shared widely with others.
Happiness is a spiritual practice, and it requires work. It is like a muscle. It grows when you nurture it and starts first and foremost, by taking care of yourself and unapologetically being you by not looking past your own needs to fulfil in others. This is what I call positive selfishness because as the saying goes, you can’t take care of anybody if you can’t take care of yourself.
Happiness and being useful. When you practice loving kindness toward yourself, magic happens. You stop being so critical of yourself, and, in turn, you become less judgemental of yourself and of the world. Work on altering the way you think. I find practising judgement-free days a very useful tool. It opens your mind, and the results are tremendous – if you have a partner, he or she will love this.
And so, you need to grow and evolve. Be the change. If you want love, be loving. If you want peace, be peaceful. If you want quiet, be quiet.
But how do you know what happiness looks like? Start thinking about cognitive re-framing. This is a way of changing your mindset. The Buddhists call it Bodhi or awakening. Changing how you view the world. Instead of focusing on resentment and bitterness, re-framing can free you. Changing the negatives into positives, transmuted into goodness.
A stranger makes a snide remark at a party. Instead of responding with hurt or anger, pause, be present, and then try to understand that this person’s behaviour stems from unhappiness and insecurity. You will not feel upset if you can elevate your thoughts from this kind of relative to ultimate thinking.
Instead, you will emanate compassion. If ego prevents you from reacting from a centre of compassion, then it is ego that will make you unhappy. This is how you can spread compassion and love and experience the nature of joy in the face of adversity. Compassion does not mean you need to be weak.
In fact, compassion and caring are traits we find in the strongest leaders. To cultivate my awareness around this concept, I keep a gratitude journal. Every day, I write down five things I am thankful for. It can be as important as a promotion or the old lady who rang her bicycle bell and waved at me. Reading these makes me remember them. In turn, I am training my brain to re-experience joy. To feel happy. To be happy.
Embracing happiness and being useful is the progressive realisation of worthy goals. These are the things that bring you joy. If making heaps of cash is a goal, then it will not make you happy. But if this money will make a demonstrative difference in your life and help others. The goal becomes worthy, cultivating compassion, another ingredient for happiness.
But remember, the ultimate source of a meaningful life lies within yourself. If you pursue happiness, you are not going to find it. It’s inside you. And guess what: it’s a scientific fact. Research has shown that in Ribonucleic acid (RNA), a nucleic acid present in all living cells that has structural similarities to DNA is associated with a healthier immune profile when kindness is shown toward others. Imagine that.
Now that you know how to approach a meaningful life, perhaps consider the following shifts in your behaviour that will naturally lead to a state of happiness and being useful. Let’s start with love. When you love, love hard and without calculation. When you do something for someone, don’t keep score.
Think before you act. Try to understand why people react the way they do before you judge and respond with negativity. Practice positive selfishness. Spoil yourself. You deserve it. Believe it. Move away from people who drain your energy. Surround yourself with positive people. If you are unsure of someone in your relationship, ask yourself, does he or she build me up or break me down? Then make a call. Be present in every situation. Show appreciation and accept compliments. Take care of your body like there is no tomorrow, exercise, Eat healthily. Ask for help if you need it.
Sing from the core of your stomach. Do not allow any person to break or dampen your spirit. Surround yourself with people who make you laugh. Author Stephen King writes, “You can’t deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favourite chair and stays as long as it wants” – and so will happiness. When you find it, hold onto it, and don’t let go. Share it because you have found the meaning of life.
Henry Bantjez holds a Master’s degree in psychology and has a history of consulting major multinationals in various countries on change management and talent development, as well as cognitive behavioural therapy