A Path to Happiness - Essay Example

Nonetheless, we can learn from unique experiences and use these experiences as yardsticks to determine our happiness. To me, I think I could say that I have been able to achieve a state that makes me feel confident about my life. In effect, this state of confidence has helped me transform into a better person, and I am able to help other people during their tough moments. Not only am I able to be joyful and be glad about life in general, but I am also able to achieve more since my state of happiness distinctively helps me work towards my life’s aspirations. In effect, working towards achieving life’s biggest dreams helps me become more motivated in life. Therefore, I can overall claim to be a lucky person in life.

Despite being a lucky person overall, I cannot deny the fact that there are instances that I did not feel sad in life. Like any other rational human being, being sad is a result of many factors, some of which are a result of my own while others are due to some circumstances that I cannot avoid. For example, I feel sad when I let my friends down and fail to meet their expectations about me in life. In this case, failing my friends is a factor that I can control with some of the reasons being my disorganized nature, which I can control by keeping a diary and updating it every time. On the other hand, I feel sad when I see the world not heading in the direction I would wish it to head towards, which can be due to weak political structures and leadership. That said, I have mechanisms that I use when I feel sad, and they have been helpful. First, I engage in an activity that will make me feel that I made the world a better place to live. In this case, I help in activities about community service and give some of my property to the underprivileged people in the society. Eventually, I achieve some sense of self-actualization that makes me feel better and move away from the state of sadness.

During one incident that I was sad, I was able to overcome my sadness and achieve a state of happiness by engaging in some activities. In this case, I was recently saddened by the appalling living condition of a family that I recently visited. This household did not have tapped water, and their source of power was unreliable. It saddened me that the family’s living conditions were these bad despite living in the twentieth century whereby advancement in technology is the main characteristic, which makes people consider things such as tapped water and power a necessity. Beyond all this, I was sadder after I realized that I could not achieve a lot as a student in order to change the lives of these family members. In effect, this made me sad, and I started blaming the political class for what the family went through. However, I realized that passing blame to someone else was not the right approach to solving my problems. Consequently, I had to act and ensure that I changed the family’s life regardless of the slight change that my action would make in their life. After undergoing a moment of soul-searching, I embarked on a project with a few friends that aimed at helping the family. With my friends, we managed to raise some money to ensure a speedy resolution to the power problem that affected the family. Although we were not able to address the water problem, we were able to change another aspect in the family’s life since they were able to have a reliable source of power. Hence, I realized the importance of engaging in a worthwhile activity made me achieve happiness and stop the feelings of sadness.

Briefly, everyone can learn from my experience on attaining happiness when they are sad. In this case, my way of attaining happiness when I am sad focuses on changing someone’s life. This way, I am able to make someone happy while I am also able to achieve happiness. Importantly, passing on blame to another person does not resolve any issue. This is a fact that I have learned over time. In effect, it is always important to find the reason behind feeling sad without passing on blame to someone else. This way, an individual achieves strength, confidence and changes the life of someone else, as in my case. Despite this approach being applicable to my life, I think anyone can learn from this approach and use it in instances that they felt sad.