Non-worrying is happiness

Don’t try to analyze your Life and try to discover, define and decide what will make you happy. Just stop worrying. Period. That will make you happy!

Yesterday I addressed some managers at a healthcare company. One of them had this question: “How do you stay happy consistently?” His point was that with all the pulls and pressures of everyday Life, while there is a “deep interest and intention in wanting to be happy”, often times, “one loses the plot”.

I agree with him. Happiness is a 24 x 7 job. It requires consistent focus. If your attention strays from being, being happy and content with what is, you will turn unhappy! You will then become a victim of the people or circumstance that govern your Life.

The simplest way to be happy is to practise “non-worrying”. It is a beautiful word – “non-worrying”! Happiness is not the absence of worry. To imagine a Life where there will be no worry is impractical. As long as thoughts arise – and they will keep arising at the rate of 60,000 a day, as long as you are alive – in the human mind, you cannot expect a worry-free Life. So the state where there is a total absence of worry will never be achieved in anyone’s lifetime. What can be striven for and achieved is a state of “non-worrying”.

“Non-worrying” means that when a worry arises in your mind, you simply let it pass. Anything that you don’t attend to will not bother to. This is the Tamil month of aadi. This is the month when the population of flies will multiply – particularly in humid conditions in Chennai. Even the cleanest five-star properties in Chennai will not be spared by the flies. So, if you walked into a swank coffee shop and found a couple of flies on the tables there, you will not make a hue and cry. You will simply ignore their sight and presence thinking to yourself, “well, this is India, this is Chennai, this is common occurrence” and move on. “Non-worrying” means treating the worry that arises as you would treat a housefly. Accept that it exists, accept that you can’t do anything about it and move on. A worry controls you only when you feed it with your attention. It controls you only when you allow it to control you. Just ignore it. Let it be. And you be too. When you make a worry powerless, it will simply recede – the same way it arose in the first place.

Of course, the human mind, like the human body, must be trained to practise “non-worrying”. And that’s what requires 24 x 7 practise, consistently! When you master the art of “non-worrying”, you will simply be, well, happy!