Wealth is like food. You can’t survive in this world without wealth just like your body can’t survive without food. More wealth, however, does not mean more happiness just like more food does not mean better health.

Your happiness depends on your ability to balance the opposites rather than sticking to only one of the truths while ignoring all others. When you avoid something for long, over a period of time, it creates a craving in you that can disturb the peace of your mind and make you suffer immensely.

Happiness is a result of the exchange surplus you create with the world. The more you give to the world and the less you take from it, the more surplus you create and that adds to your happiness balance.

Your random acts of kindness like helping a blind man cross the street, giving free tuition to poor children or cleaning your surroundings, never go waste as they get deposited in your happiness account. If you refuse to 160 | 31 Ways to Happiness Deposit in Your Happiness Account | 161 accept any remuneration for your good work, you enrich yourself spiritually by getting more joy in your life.

When you love your job, the quality of work improves effortlessly. You don’t get tired with your work but feel recharged. Your work itself becomes a great source of joy for you.

Happiness is a state of mind, so our miseries and joy come from living in any of the three dimensions of time—past, present and future. Hence, if we wish to live happily, we must learn to remove sufferings not only from the present, but also from the past and future.

Nature ensures joy and pain to everyone. When you are only expecting joy in your life, you can’t handle pain and any painful episode will seem to be even more painful to you. However, when you are mentally prepared for pain, it can’t make you suffer easily. If most people suffer, it is because they are always expecting pleasure and happiness in their life. Hence, when suffering knocks at their door, they are unprepared for it and suffer immense pain.

We must remember that pain is just the other side of joy. If you avoid all possibilities to pain, you also block all avenues of happiness. It is like writing an examination. If you want to be absolutely sure that you don’t fail, you don’t write the examination. However, by doing so, you also block all your chances of success.

There can’t be any formula for happiness because happiness is an effect and not a cause. The same activity, which at one time gave you happiness, may now become a source of suffering. Or often a great suffering ends up becoming a source of joy.