Category: Personal Development

Laughter is not happiness…..this is what I teach my students, and listeners. How can you differentiate laughter and smile from happiness. Before we explore this question, we first have to understand what happiness is. According to the great philosophers around the world, happiness is a feeling, while laughter and pleasure is a temporary state. The person laughing can be actually a sad person deep down inside while a happy person cannot be sad or in a state of grief. The problem arises when most of us run after pleasure rather then happiness. The pleasure is temporary and we achieve it with momentary activities like partying, drugs, and movies. However, happiness cannot be achieved by these useless activities. The question now arises, “how can we achieve happiness?” What one thing can provide us happiness? There are plenty of secrets of attaining happiness. However, I will discuss only one and I would suggest you practice it every day.

GRATITUDE:

The gratitude is undoubtedly the universally agreed upon secret of eternal happiness. Unfortunately, very few of us practice it. Most of us don’t even know what gratitude is all about. Gratitude is being thankful and content with what we have. The law of gratitude will ensure you receive more and more. Once you understand this secret about the law of gratitude, you will attain eternal happiness. When you wake up in the morning be grateful for whatever you have. Be grateful to every single thing you have, look at your eyes, imagine how the life would be like without eyes. Be grateful to your hands, your legs, and every single thing given to you by nature. Be grateful for the nice people you have in your life. Be grateful that you can read this blog, be grateful that you are either reading this blog on a cell phone or on a computer or an electronic device. This means you can afford this device. There are millions of people in this world who cannot afford these devices. If I just start to count the things in our life that we all should be grateful for, I will probably need a million years to write a blog.

The problem arises when we focus on the things we don’t have and we don’t want. We tend to focus on the lack of money, lack of facilities that we have, or the negative people in our lives, and this negative focus is actually a complain in the eyes of nature. The laws of nature are blind, they don’t see who is following the laws, they just produce the results. They produce the result every single time -whether you want it or not- the results are bound to come. Therefore, don’t complain…..don’t find faults in others, don’t focus on what you don’t have and want. Instead focus on what you have and what you want. The law of gratitude ensures that you receive more and more. This receiving is not always tangential, most of the times it is intengential which includes the peace of mind and happiness. Happiness is achieved by being grateful. Just try this as an exercise, try to count the things you are grateful for in your life and you will start to feel happy. The more happiness you want the more grateful you need to become. This wisdom is not self created post or artificial wisdom I have described. This wisdom has been taught by all the great religions of world and is mentioned in all the religious scriptures of the world. Just decide today that you will be more and grateful every single day.

Hassaan Tohid

“You are an idiot”, “you can’t do anything in your life,” “you are dumb,” these are the comments and labels we all have heard from someone about ourselves. The difference between a successful person and an unsuccessful person is that a successful person doesn’t believe in these comments and knows that someone’s comments about him is not his reality. While the unsuccessful people are the one’s who start to believe in these lies what some people tell about theirselves. As a result, they develop low self-esteem.

One of the most important reasons of failure in life is the lack of self-esteem. The self-esteem means how we feel about ourselves. How we feel about ourselves is a learned behavior that we all can overcome. There are certain steps you can follow to improve your self-esteem. But first you need to recognize that whether your esteem is high or low. The following are three important signs and the strategies you can use to improve your self-esteem.

THE THREE SIGNS OF LOW SELF-ESTEEM AND HOW TO HANDLE THEM

YOU ARE APPROVAL HUNGRY:

One of the most important signs of low self-esteem is that you need approval about every action you take in your life. You always ask others what do they think about your actions or your plans. If others like it then you think it must be a good action or plan. Now how do you control this urge of seeking approval from others?

The answer is “Trust yourself”…. Many people would argue that how can we trust ourselves when have no self-esteem, no confidence, and we cannot trust ourselves. Now how do you handle this situation? Remember, we all are human beings and we all make mistakes, no one is perfect. Your decisions and actions could be wrong. And they should be wrong some of the times, otherwise you would be God. Learn to make mistakes and take wrong decisions. Just increase the number of actions you take and some of your decisions will be correct and some will be wrong, because you are human.

Do you think all of my decisions were correct? None of my decisions initially were correct but later on some decisions turned out to be the good ones and it is still the same situation. I learned the lesson to take more and more actions and decisions. I know now that because of the law of averages, some of our decisions will be wrong and some will be correct the reason being, we all are humans not super-humans. Therefore, stop seeking approval from others, they are not perfect and they make more mistakes than you probably, but you are just impressed with them because you never learned to trust yourself. Seek advice not approval and reject the advice if its not wise. It doesn’t matter where the advice is coming from. Respect elders, but you can choose to not follow someone’s advise if it doesn’t follow the logic or its incorrect according to your understanding. It is not disrespectful to ignore an elder’s advice, it simply means that you respected them by seeking advice and you later calculated and took the decision that was the best. You just respectfully disagreed with their advice.

YOU ARE A PEOPLE PLEASER AND CANNOT SAY NO:

Another important sign of low self-esteem is that you are always looking to please others. People who always look to please others have low self-esteem. If others are happy with you then you feel that you must be a good person, but if someone is unhappy with you, then you feel there must be something wrong with you.

Learn to get the hatred of others, learn to not care what others say and think about you. Remember, there are eight billion people in this world. It is impossible to be liked by everyone. Remember if everyone likes you, then there must be something wrong with you or you are living among a bunch of hypocrites who have dual face and many of them hate you behind your back. Someone rightly said, that even to win an election you need only 51 percent people to like you, you still have 49 percent haters. Does a politician cry that why 49 percent people hate me? Thus, learn to take the hates. Learn something from Donald Trump and Barrack Obama, their opponents hate them, but do they care?

Moreover, learn to say NO to others. When friends call you for dinner or a movie and you have a research project or an exam coming up, you just cannot say NO. Just say No. Remember the same people you are pleasing today and cannot say NO to, are the same people who will leave you when you are unsuccessful and have no money. They will be the same people who will make fun of you when you are a failure. Try failing in exams and eventually in your life, then you will agree with what I am saying. But trust me if you say NO to them, they will probably be upset today but they will be fine in a few days, probably they will just say that its okay we respect your decision and we want you to succeed. If they really respect you and don’t get mad at you for saying NO, then they really are good friends.

After your project and exam, go out with them, they will always be available trust me.

IMPRESSED TOO MUCH WITH CELEBRITIES:

Another clear sign of low self-esteem is being too impressed with TV personalities and celebrities. We all had been a victim of this, I myself used to take autographs and selfies, until I realized that it is a sign of low self-esteem. Why do people take photos with celebrities? Obviously to get the approval of others or to impress others by showing off. Again you are either seeking an approval or you are trying to impress or please others. Impress yourself, like yourself, respect yourself, and trust and approve yourself, and you will never ever need approval of others.

Remember the celebrities are not better than you. You yourself are a celebrity. You are the most important person; that’s why God or nature (if you don’t believe in God) created you and sent you to this world.

Next time when you see a celebrity, resist the temptation to take a photograph or selfie with them. Instead you should be thinking that one day people will take my autograph and take selfie’s with me. Talk to yourself every day that “I am the best; I am not less than any celebrity.” Your self talk will determine your success in life and your self-esteem. You are not less than any celebrity or any president or any sportsman. You are unique, you are that unique and precious that a similar person like you can never be born again. According to an estimate by genetics experts, even your parents cannot create a second person exactly like you. They will have to give birth to more than one billion (1000,000,000) kids to reproduce a person with similar qualities and features like you. So stop comparing yourself with others, you are incomparable and you are the best of all creations.

CONCLUSION:

The self-esteem is directly proportional to your success and your status in life. If your self-esteem or self-worth is low, your achievements in life will be low, if your self-esteem is high, you will achieve more in life.