This is a modified version of an answer I gave to a question on Quora.

Here’s the question: What should I do if I find life a meaningless pursuit? Why is doing something better than doing nothing? If both are same, then why not quit?What is the meaning in waking up, do some stuff, go back to sleep, and repeat this cycle?

This is how I replied:

My response:

Find the true meaning of life. You mentioned that you’re tired of waking up, doing some stuff, going back to sleep, and repeating that cycle. Well, imagine if there was another cycle that was far longer. The cycle of birth and death. Imagine doing that same cycle of waking up, doing some stuff, and going back to sleep, repeating etc., except, you weren’t just doing it for one life, you were doing it for millions and billions of births. That is the cycle of birth and death for you. If you think life now is mundane, imagine how much more of it we have to experience as long as we don’t break out of it.

But, what if you also had the chance to use this life to break out of such a cycle. Wouldn’t that be fulfilling? Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to experience such a mundane cycle over and over and over and over again? Wouldn’t it be nice to instead live in a realm where we had eternal bliss and life, where each day was a new adventure, and things got better all the time instead of getting more boring? If you think so, well you’re in luck, because having a human body provides you with the means to do exactly all that.

This human form of life affords us the opportunity to perfect ourselves in self-realization and attain release from this miserable cycle of birth and death. That sounds like a meaningful goal to me. Through the process of spirituality, we can achieve exactly this.

However, if you still think that life would be dry if all we have to live for was the uncertain chance of having a better next life, you still have nothing to worry about. Spirituality offers us a range of benefits that we can enjoy even in this life itself.

• A greater standard of happiness — The happiness we can achieve through spirituality is far, far greater than the happiness that materialism brings us. As you mentioned, you find material activities pretty boring and dull. Well, that’s because it’s the very nature of material things to offer us some satisfaction in the beginning when we pursue them. But, ultimately in the end we get increasingly tired of them. Think about it, let’s say you work hard and try to get a new material thing to enjoy. Let’s use a new iPhone for example. You work hard just to get that iPhone. But then what happens when you get it? You may get some enjoyment out of it initially, but after a while that enjoyment stops. Instead, after a while, you get tired of that phone and start to want to get a new phone. Then you work hard again and get another phone, and the exact same thing happens. There’s some happiness in the beginning, but after a while you start to feel unsatisfied. Continuing this cycle on and on and on searching for permanent happiness through temporary means is not going to fulfill you. Your life becomes a constant but unfulfilled search for happiness, when instead you could experience continuous joy by realizing the happiness already within yourself. That’s exactly what spirituality allows you to do. You’ll realize you don’t need to search for happiness in inert matter, you can instead find it within yourself. The best part is, the more you learn to connect to that internal happiness, the stronger it becomes. This means it keeps increasing all the time. Now, that’s a much better situation compared to material life, which gives you less and less satisfaction.

• A greater sense of purpose in life — As mentioned before, spirituality gives us the goal of self-realization that we constantly strive towards. This is significant because this is a life-long goal. We may have other goals in our life, but they usually only last so long. Usually, to keep ourselves motivated, we have to constantly jump from one goal to another. But, wouldn’t it be easier if we instead had one goal we could really focus on and not have to worry about constantly changing it? That’s the benefit of spirituality. When you live a spiritual life, you find meaning in each and every day. Every day is exciting because it’s an opportunity for you to grow. Moreover, you feel like you’re constantly being rewarded for your efforts. When you see yourself making noticeable advancement frequently, then you become much more enthusiastic about your life and you never feel a lack of motivation. Ordinarily, with material endeavors, there’s some more uncertainty. We try and try and try to achieve something, but really, there’s no clear shot of success. So, we may achieve what we wanted to, and that feels great. But, there’s also times where we try really hard for something, and unfortunately, it doesn’t work out. What then? Usually our motivation suffers and we feel unhappy. I’d much prefer the consistent feeling of motivation you experience by having spiritual goals rather than go through the ups and downs of only having material ones.

• A greater way of seeing the world — Imagine if you saw a man walking down the street with a knife in his hand. What would your response be? Most likely, I imagine you’d be pretty scared. But, what if instead, you learned that this man was actually a surgeon, and the reason he had a knife in his hands was so that he could save a dying patient’s life. What would your thoughts be then? I’d take a guess and say you’d feel much, much better. So, even with this one scenario, the way you felt dramatically changed when your changed your perspective on things. So, spirituality also provides with an enhanced perspective that allows us to go through life with greater clarity and peace of mind. We’ll learn to see the challenges and difficulties in our life as opportunities for growth. When you’re striving for self-realization, you’ll understand that the universe presents the difficulties in your life in order teach you important lessons so that you can mature spiritually. Suppose you got in a car accident and totaled your car, but luckily made it out alive. Now, you could get upset about this event, or, you can learn to see it from a different perspective. Maybe you were meant to have died in that crash, but instead you were saved by the hand of God and made it out alive. Or, perhaps you were excessively attached to your car, and this crash was an opportunity for you to be able to relinquish that attachment and see how excessive attachment to temporary material things only sets you up for disappointment when those things have to be discarded.

• A greater heart — As a result of progressing towards self-realization, we also purify our hearts. Right now, there are things in our heart that we wish we didn’t have. Anger for example. Does anyone actually enjoy becoming angry. No. But yet people get angry all the time. Why? Because it’s an impurity that lies within our heart. It’s so deep-rooted that even though we don’t want it, it still manifests itself. The same goes for a whole list of other things, greed, jealousy, pride, etc. But the point is not to get depressed over our impurities. Through spiritually, we can cleanse our hearts of all these unwanted things and instead awaken our pure nature, which is untouched by any of these impurities. Imagine what you would feel like if you didn’t experience any anger, or any greed, or any jealousy, or any of anything negative. It would be amazing.

Of course there are other benefits with spirituality that I didn’t mention here. Things like being part of a vibrant spiritual community, the rewarding feeling of always learning new things, great books to read, great people to meet, the thrills of taking spiritual vacations etc. But if I had to list them all this answer would turn into a book.

Now, I’ve realized I’ve talked a lot of about the benefits of spirituality but I haven’t left you with anything practical. So, I’ll leave you with a special secret. I’ve tried all sorts of spiritual practices. But the one that has been the most effective for me by far is mantra meditation. Mantra meditation is simply where you chant and mantra and meditate on its sound. The best mantra I’ve found to chant and meditate on is the maha-mantra, which is: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare/ Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. By chanting this mantra repeatedly, you’ll see amazing changes in your life. You can chant on beads, (look up japa beads) or chant it out loud to yourself for a certain amount of time. (I also like to chant in my mind whilst doing other things).

• Here’s a video that explains mantra meditation more in-depth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjEoZsJwTnQ

• If you don’t have beads, you can also try downloading a counter app that helps you keep a track of how many times you’ve chanted the mantra. A standard set of chanting beads has 108 beads, so you can keep chanting until your app reaches the count of 108.

If you want to do some more reading on this topic, I’d also recommend this reading list. Good luck with your search for purpose. Hare Krishna.

Society is facing a real issue today.

These days there’s increasing awareness of the inequality rampant in our society.

Material differences among us shouldn’t be a reason for us to fight and hate each other. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening.

And unfortunately despite social movement after social movement after social movement, this hatred still prevails. What’s the deal? Is there even a solution?

The Reality

Not the way we’re handling things currently. The problem is that we’re taking the wrong approach to this problem. We’re trying to pretend that differences among us don’t exist.

The blunt truth is, we are not all equal from a material standpoint.

We all have unique talents and abilities. If you get a group of people in a room together, one person is going the be the fastest runner, one person is going to be the best at math, one person is going to be the best singer, and so on.

Empirically, there are differences among us.

That’s just life.

Solving the Problem With Spiritual Knowledge

Fortunately, the ancient tradition of bhakti-yoga provides us with a way of achieving harmony within society. Rather than try for an unrealistic goal of equality on the material level, it encourages us to look for equality on the spiritual level.

The Bhagavad-gītā teaches us that someone with knowledge sees all living beings equally, even living beings in different species.

“The humble sages, by virtue of true knowledge, see with equal vision a learned and gentle brāhmaṇa [a priest], a cow, an elephant, a dog and a dog-eater [outcaste].” (Bhagavad-gītā, 5.18).

Why? Because they understand that we are not our bodies.

We are spiritual souls, and the body is just a dress that covers our soul.

Ending the Hatred, Starting the Love

If we truly understood this basic fact, then we would see a lot less hatred in the world. We would see each other as spiritual brothers and sisters, rather than people totally different than us.

We could acknowledge that there are material differences among us, yet still treat each other equally.

After all, just because someone drives a different car than you doesn’t mean you hate them. We may all be passengers driving different types of bodies, but that’s no reason to see each other differently.

Of course that being said, the way we treat each other will depend some degree on the bodies we have. You’d act much differently towards a shark than you would your parents. But with the proper knowledge, you can still learn to love all living beings and treat them compassionately whilst acknowledging these material differences.

Summary

So, while material equality isn’t worth striving for, spiritual equality is. By learning to see each other as spiritual equals, we can eliminate hatred and move towards a more peaceful society.

If you want to learn more, check out my recommended reading list here.

About the Author

Akshay Gupta is a published author and a graduate student of Religion at Duke University.

Has this ever happened to you?

You’re walking around in the woods and a little bit later on you start to feel an itching sensation. You keep itching and itching, but it doesn’t help. It only makes it worse.

Then, you find out the bad news.

You just got poison ivy. Your friends warn you “don’t scratch it, it’ll only make it worse.” But what do you do? You ignore them and keep scratching it.

Later on though, you regret not taking your friends’ advice. As you keep scratching, the itching spreads all over your body and becomes out of control.

Now you really can’t help it anymore.

The Itching Gets Worse

You’ve learned the hard way that scratching the itches just makes it worse. Yet, you can’t help it. The itching sensation is beyond your level of self-control to overcome.

The only thing to do now is to wait until it’s gone. Creams and ointments may help but they’re only a temporary relief from the suffering you have to experience.

By the time it’s over you regret getting poison ivy in the first place. Even when you had it, you realize how much easier your life would have been if you had tolerated the itch from the beginning.

Getting poison ivy is a miserable experience. No sane person would willingly put themselves through this experience. I mean, you’d have to be crazy to.

But yet, we continue to lead overly materialistic lives. And it’s the exact same thing.

The Pitfalls of Materialism

In a materialistic lifestyle, we never find true satisfaction.

We are spiritual beings at our core, we only happen to have a material body.

Material things can temporarily satisfy our body, but they fail to bring us true fulfillment because they aren’t providing us the deeper happiness our soul longs for.

A Vicious Cycle

Think of what a materialistic lifestyle really involves. It’s an endless cycle of frustration.

We think, “ok, if I can just get enough money to buy X then I’ll be happy.” X could be the newest iPhone (which is the exact same as your current iPhone only 3.7% slimmer or some BS like that), a better car (so you can get rid of the perfectly ok car you have now to guzzle gas and your wallet faster), or a new house (so you can have more room to burden yourself with things).

But then what happens when you finally get X after all your hard work? You’re still not satisfied. It’s not enough that you just got X, now you want Y.

So of course, you work hard and after all that hard work you finally get Y. But then what?

It’s exactly like the time you got X. You think getting Y would make you happy, but it doesn’t. Instead, it only makes you greedier for Z.

How Materialism is Just Like Poison Ivy

I think you see where this cycle is going. It’s exactly like getting poison ivy. We experience an itching sensation to get some material thing. But then what happens when we scratch that itch and fuel our desire?

The itch of our material desire doesn’t go away. In fact it’s the opposite. The itching sensation only gets stronger.

Yet we don’t stop. We continue to itch and itch and fuel our material desires until it gets to the point where we can’t control ourselves.

Along the way we may experience some relief from the creams and ointments of material happiness. But such happiness is more like a temporary relief from our suffering more than it is genuine joy.

We wonder why we didn’t take help from our friends, the genuine spiritual teachers who repeatedly warned us about the perils about scratching the itch.

In the midst of our frustration, we also regret not tolerating the itch of material desire early on when it was manageable.

Where Spirituality Comes In

Fortunately, despite all the trouble we experience, this story can have a happy ending.

Imagine how peaceful our lives could be if we didn’t have to chase after material things to make us happy. Instead, what if all the happiness we needed was already within ourselves?

We would be experience far less frustration in our lives.

Through spirituality we don’t have to fall victim to the itching of our material desires. We can experience happiness all the time regardless of our material circumstances.

The happiness you get by living a spiritual life keeps increasing as well.

Coming Back to the Source

But exactly how do we achieve this happiness?

If you take a fish out of the ocean, it’ll never be happy until you put it back to where it’s intended to be — in the ocean.

We’re like a fish out of water, flapping around trying to find happiness. But until we’re back to where we’re intended to be, we won’t be happy.

Spirituality is about coming back to our original source. Different spiritual traditions refer to this source by different names. Some call it God, some call it Allah, or Krishna, or Jehovah, or the Supreme, or the Absolute. Really we could go on, but the point is that our original source is one, despite having many names.

It’s like the sun. People in Mexico call the sun “El Sol,” people in America call it “the sun,” and people in India call it “Surya.” But that doesn’t mean that there’s multiple suns. Despite having many names and being mentioned in various ways in different cultures, the sun is one.

Understanding Our Source

When we reconnect back with this source — call it what you will, then we begin to experience real happiness, and we align ourselves with how we are really meant to live. Just like the fish coming back into the ocean.

Like the fish, we also keep our individuality when we reconnect with the our original source as well. Rather than extinguish our identity to merge into some formless existence as some people try to do, we can actually enjoy a loving relationship with our original source because He is a person just like us.

In fact, the proof that He is a person comes from the fact that we are people. If we are seen as a creation of the Supreme, then how can He not have a personality when we do? The creation is never greater than the creator, so how could we have a quality which He doesn’t have?

In this world, one of the best things we can enjoy is the relationships we have with other people. If we can find meaning by having relationships with people who are able to only partially understand us and love us to a finite degree, then imagine how fulfilling it will be to reestablish our relationship with the Supreme. He can understand our hearts better than we can, and He can love us to an infinite degree.

How to Reconnect Through Sound

The way to reconnect with this source is through the path of devotion. Though the major religions of the world have their disagreements, devotion is the one thing almost all them share in common.

We are all individuals. So each of one of us has a special way by which we express our devotion. Still, great saints and sages have given us especially powerful spiritual practices for this age that allow us awaken the dormant bliss we have lying within us.

One particularly powerful practice for the age that we are living in is mantra-meditation. In mantra meditation, one chants a mantra consisting of names of the Supreme and hears the sound vibration of the mantra attentively.

The bhakti tradition chants the Hare Krishna mantra, which is as follows: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare/Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. You can check out this video to learn more about it here.

Of course if one is part of another religious or spiritual group that also has its own name of God, one can also chant the names of God given in that particular religion and make quick spiritual advancement as well.

Other Powerful Practices

Another powerful practice is to read spiritual literature. Spiritual literature has profound wisdom which can give us guidance and direct us to ultimate spiritual perfection.

Such books are very powerful because they contain the mature realizations of great souls. Imagine if you nothing about rocket science and wanted to learn more about it. It’d be difficult to learn everything from scratch. But, if you talk to an expert rocket scientist, they can quickly teach you things that would’ve taken you forever to figure out on your own.

If you’re wondering which books to read, you can check out the list of my personal favorite books to read here.

The people you surround yourself with is also crucial for your personal growth. In any activity you try, it’s important to keep company with like-minded people.

For example if you want to succeed at business, then it’s important to make friends with other business-minded people. Or if you want to be a scientist, then you’d make friends with other scientists.

It’s the same way in spiritual life. When you’re around other spiritually-minded people, then their spirituality rubs off on you and gives you more strength to pursue your own spiritual path.

Finding a Teacher

There are many other aspects to spiritual life, but these simple ones can take you a long way. Eventually one should find a spiritual teacher more advanced than oneself and take instructions from him or her.

With anything in life, it’s always helpful to have someone more advanced than you to guide you. For example if you want to learn about biology, you enroll in a university so that you can learn from someone with years of experience.

Spiritual life is no different. A genuine spiritual teacher can teach you things that would’ve normally taken ages to learn.

Conclusion

When we follow the path of spirituality, we can begin to experience true joy.

Our soul is originally pure and full of bliss, but right now this pure nature is covered over. Through spirituality, we begin to uncover our true selves and understand our identity as souls.

The more that our true selves starts to reveal itself, the more bliss we will experience in our lives. When we fully attain spiritual perfection, we will become overwhelmed with an incredible ever-increasing feeling of bliss 24/7, because that’s our true nature.

Along the way, even as we don’t attain spiritual perfection immediately, we can still experience increasing joy as we continue to realize ourselves more and more.

And it’s a far brighter future than a materialistic life of never-ending itching and longing.

We all want to make a difference.

But despite our good intentions to improve the world around us, we still see so much wrong with the world.

That’s because we have the wrong approach.

No matter how hard you try at something, if you don’t have the right strategy, you’re bound to fail.

Improving the world is no different.

Most of us have good intentions. We try to make a meaningful impact on the world and change it for the better. But there’s a reason it isn’t working as well as we want it to.

The Missing Factor

In our formula for making the world a better place, we neglect one of the most important factors in the equation. Ourselves.

As humans, we are responsible for affecting our world. It’s as simple as that. How can we hope to make any change unless we change ourselves?

It’s for this reason Gandhi said, “be the change you want to see in the world.”

If we try to make the world a less hateful place, but we harbor hate within ourselves, how can we possibly hope to succeed? We can’t. We need the right approach.

Getting to the Root of the Issue

An effective strategy deals with a problem at the root. Otherwise problems will continue to happen.

If you’ve ever gardened, you’ll know that weeds pop in up in your garden. Guess what happens when you pluck the weeds on the surface of the soil without getting rid of the roots? They grow right back.

But guess what happen when you pluck the roots right out? The weed stops growing.

The problems we face as a society are just like the weeds in a garden. We try to solve one problem after another, yet they keep popping up. And they will continue to keep popping up until we can solve the problem at the root — our own imperfections.

If we can overcome our own imperfections, then we can solve our problems at the root. By doing this, then we can finally start to see a better world instead of a world that faces one problem after another.

Adding Spirituality Into Our Lives

But how exactly can we start to change ourselves? By adding a spiritual component to our lives.

At our core we are spiritual beings. We’re not meant to live a lifestyle of excessive materialism. It’s artificial.

Of course we have a material bodies and material needs. It’s still necessary to be practical about how we maintain ourselves. Spirituality doesn’t mean that we give up our occupation altogether.

Spirituality means that we reconnect with our original source (The Divine, God, Allah, Jehovah, Krishna, the Divine, etc.). Reconnecting with our source gives us many benefits.

Understanding Our True Selves

Of course one benefit is that we experience an intense joy and that keeps increasing.

But, we also start to understand who we really are. We are not our bodies, but souls. We only happen to be encaged in bodies.

Imagine you’re driving a car. Wouldn’t it be silly to think that when you’re driving the car, you are the car itself? You’re the person driving the car, but you are not the car itself.

Similarly, we are the person operating the body, but we are not our body itself.

Reviving Our Pure Nature

Why does this matter? Because as souls, we are originally pure beings.

Our pure nature is temporarily covered, but through spirituality it can be revived. Imagine a drop of water falling from the sky into a puddle of mud. The water is originally pure, but because it contacted the mud, it became dirty. But if you remove the dirt from the water, it becomes pure again.

In the same way, our consciousness, though originally pure, has become dirty by contact with this world. But, just like we can remove mud from water to make it pure again, we can remove the impurities within us to make ourselves pure again.

This understanding empowers us as well. Despite our impurities and imperfections, we can get relief knowing that we are not our impurities and imperfections. We are beyond them.

When we awaken our purer nature by practicing spirituality, then that’s when we’ll start to see a difference in the world.

Compassion from the Heart

The purer we become, the more we will naturally start to act morally, without having to be told to. We will become kinder, more sensitive to the feelings of others, more environmentally conscious, less violent, etc.

Without this purification however, things won’t work. We may try to act morally, but it will be artificial if it’s not coming from the heart.

Think about it. If we put in as much effort into improving ourselves as we did in trying to make the world a better place, then the world would already be a better place by now.

It almost sounds too simple to work. But the best solutions are usually the simplest ones.

Summary

Indeed, if we want to change the world around us, it starts by changing the person we stare at in the mirror. Reawakening our pure nature through spirituality will naturally solve many of our problems — at the root where it matters.

For a more in-depth explanation of how to practice spirituality, check out my reading list here.

About the Author

Akshay Gupta is a published author and a graduate student of Religion at Duke University. For further inquiries you can contact him via email @ akshayg95@yahoo.com.

If it feels good do it.

It might be a popular new age mantra, but is it really the key to happiness?

Ancient wisdom would respond with a flat “no.”

Why Trying to Feel Good Frustrates Us

We all want to be happy. That’s a fact of life. But there’s a problem when we try to get our happiness chasing after temporary pleasure.

Think of a time you wanted something you couldn’t have. I’m sure you thought about that particular thing until it was always on your mind and you became attached to it.

Then what? You really had to have it. But then what happened when you didn’t get it? You got frustrated in the end.

It’s like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings. Gollum wants the ring so badly but he becomes mad in his constant attempts to try to get it. The whole time he’s thinking about the ring he has no peace of mind.

Or, sometimes we want something and it doesn’t match our expectations. Even though we got what we were searching after, we still remain frustrated.

Choosing the Path of Joy Over Pleasure

Luckily there’s a way to avoid such frustrations. We can achieve constant, lasting happiness if we choose the path of joy over the path of pleasure.

In the path of pleasure you’re chasing one desire after another for the temporary good feelings it brings. It’s true you may get what you want some of the time. But, other times we run into the frustrations that I described before.

The path of joy is different. With the path of joy we don’t have to embark on a constant journey for pleasure because we get all our happiness from within ourselves.

If you were thirsty, would you take a flight to the Sahara desert and spend hours to find an oasis? No, that would be silly. Especially when you can go to your kitchen and fill up a glass of water.

So why then, do we make the process of finding happiness harder than it needs to be when it’s not far from us at all?

Finding Our Real Place

To achieve a life of joy, it’s a matter of transitioning from a materialistic life to a spiritual one.

With materialism, we get some initial happiness from our activities in the beginning, but after a while the amount of happiness we experience starts to decrease.

With spirituality however, it’s the opposite. In the beginning it takes time for us to start experiencing happiness, but once we do, it goes up from there.

At our core we are spiritual beings. For us to become happy without a spiritual component to our lives is like a fish trying to become happy living outside of the water.

Find Sunshine Even on Rainy Days

With spirituality we try to reconnect ourselves with our original source (The Divine, God, Allah, Jehovah, Krishna, etc.) When we reconnect with our original source, we start to experience tremendous bliss that continues to increase. By experiencing this bliss, we feel joyful and happy all the time.

The unconditional happiness one experiences through the joy of spirituality doesn’t depend on anything outside of ourselves.

You could be having a bad day and still be happy. Like, a really bad day. Let’s say you dinged up your car on the way to work, got to work only to have your boss fire you, and returned home only to find it burning up in flames.

If you’re getting your happiness from inside, even despite all those events you can still have a smile on your face.

Summary

So, why settle for a life of frustration when we can achieve a life filled with ever-increasing joy? All it takes is finding a spiritual foundation that enables us to be content from within. If you’re interesting in learning more, check out my reading list here.

About the Author

Akshay Gupta is a graduate student of religion at Duke University.

We all want to achieve our highest potential. By making a simple change to your attitude, you’ll get there a lot quicker.

Improve Yourself With the Proper Mindset

What’s the change we need to make? To stop seeing the faults of others.

Stopping ourselves from finding fault with others starts by understanding that we only look for faults in others because we have the same faults ourselves. Instead of praising ourselves and being critical of others, we should praise others and be more introspective with ourselves.

By appreciating the good in others, we develop a more positive mentality which leads us to become the very best version of ourselves. Of course this is much easier said than done, but by working toward this higher mindset we can achieve it.

As mentioned earlier, see the good in others rather than the bad. We’re a mixed breed. We all have certain good qualities that we are trying to develop. We also all have certain bad qualities we are trying to overcome.

Focus on the good in someone and develop a positive attitude so you can bring those good qualities out. Don’t shame someone for their shortcomings.

Practical Steps to Take

It’s also important to surround yourself with good people. Do the people around you criticize you and only seem to see what you lack rather than what you have to offer? If so, then that type of negativity is only going to rub off on you.

We become exactly like the people that we keep company with. If you want to develop into the best version of yourself, then become friends with other positive people.

With any goal that we want to achieve, it’s also important to have the proper practice. For removing the negativity within us and replacing it with positivity, there’s also a proper practice. This is where having a strong spiritual foundation comes into play.

I’ve personally found that mantra meditation (recitation of sacred chants), prayer, and reading sacred texts has been very effective in empowering me to develop into the best version of myself.

Your environment is also important for impacting your consciousness. Do you want to be in a messy, noisy, environment where your mind gets bogged down, or do you want a neat and quiet environment where you can find inner peace? The choice is quite obvious.

Lastly, you can develop confidence in your own abilities. We all have our own God-given talents, and it’s up to us to figure out the best way to use them.

They say that comparison is the thief of joy. When we’re compare ourselves to others, we begin to feel resentment towards those that can do things that we can’t.

But remember, we all have our own unique talents that we can use to do things no one else can. Focus on what you can do and perfect that. Don’t worry about what others can do because that will lead to frustration and resentment, which you’ll do much better without.

Summary

Imagine how much better you would perform if you appreciated the good in everyone and radiated that kind of positive energy to everyone you met. You’ll be happier, and with that enhanced positivity, you’re one step closer to achieving your dreams.

If you want to learn more, check out my recommended reading list here.

There’s one thing that we can all agree on.

We all want to be happy.

Why Happiness Escapes Us

The problem is, in our pursuit of happiness we often find ourselves stressing out over the very things that we try to get happiness from. Often times, we get so focused on our goal that we lose sight of what it means to be happy in the present.

With anything in our lives, how many times have we felt disappointed when the result of what we set out to do didn’t match our expectations?

Take school for example. How many of us have driven ourselves crazy studying for a test only to become disappointed when we didn’t get the grade we thought we deserved?

We want to achieve success, but the irony is that our expectations of success lead us to frustration. At the same time, we can’t live life without a purpose either.

The problem is not that we set goals for ourself. The problem is not that we want to achieve something great with our lives. The problem is that we get attached to the outcome of our work and form expectations. When these expectations are unmet, we experience frustration.

The Key to Overcome Frustration

Luckily there’s a quick fix to eliminating this unnecessary stress from our lives. A shift in consciousness is all that’s required.

The way to cut stress from our lives is to work in a state of detachment from the result of our work. We’re conditioned to want to enjoy the results of our work, but there’s a problem with this.

Things don’t go the way we want them to.

Working while being unattached to the results of our work frees us from the frustration of having our expectations unmet. This doesn’t mean we don’t work hard. It means that we work hard and take things as they come to us.

Success will still come to us if we work hard. It just might not come in the way that we expected it to. Acquiring a new perspective will enable us to react positively when things turn out differently than how we wanted them to.

Change Your Life With a New Perspective

As we go through life, we learn that there are many things beyond our control. All spiritual traditions acknowledge that there is a higher power (The Supreme, God, Allah, Jehovah, Krishna, etc.) directing the events in our life for the better.

When we understand that our abilities are limited, it can initially be disappointing. Yet, it gives us a more realistic perspective on life and enables us to place our trust in this higher power.

Ultimately, this power does everything for our ultimate benefit. Learning to trust it empowers us with a new sense of freedom.

When we get this perspective, then we can see all the events in our life as good, whether they turned out the way we wanted to or not.

When we work like this, we end our stress and frustration. Ironically, even though we are not as attached to the outcome of our work, we perform better because our mind is worry free.

Summary

Stress doesn’t have to steal away our happiness. By working without attachment to the results of our actions and trusting a higher power guiding our lives, we can live the stress-free life we all want.

If you want to learn more, check out my reading list here.

Have you ever searched around all over the place looking for something only to realize you’ve had it in your hand all along? Happiness is just like that. If you’re truly happy, then you don’t need to search after happiness because you already have it with you.

Unfortunately, what society promotes to us today is the exact opposite of what makes us happy. We’re being fed all these wrong ideas about what will make us happy, and as a result we’re being robbed of our opportunity to experience genuine joy.

What Happiness Isn’t

Before explaining what happiness is, I’ll explain what happiness isn’t. Happiness is not working like a slave so that you can get the newest gadget, gizmo, house, car [insert whatever else you think will make you happy but never does]. Striving for material things doesn’t make us happy because as long as we desire something, we’re not happy.

You might be thinking “what? That’s what society has been telling me all along.” Well just think about it. If you’re always thinking of getting something, then how can you find peace? You’ll never be truly content is you’re always thinking, “once I get X, then I’ll really be happy” because guess what happens when you do finally get X. All of a sudden now you want Y and you start thinking, “ok I just got X, but if I get Y, then I’ll be happy.”

This type of materialism is just a frustrating, endless cycle of always wanting something yet never being content with what you have or being grateful for everything that’s been given to you.

What Happiness Truly Looks Like

So if materialism isn’t what happiness look like, then exactly what does happiness look like then? True happiness is being unconditionally happy and joyful regardless of the circumstances in your life. Happiness doesn’t come through material means. It comes through deeper inner fulfillment.

How do we get this deeper inner fulfillment if it doesn’t come through materialism? The answer is that we can get this type of fulfillment through spirituality. If you look at our recorded human history, practically every major civilization had some component of spirituality to it.

At our core we’re spiritual beings. The wave of materialism that we’re experiencing is causing us to forget this, but if you look at the places with the most materialism, you’ll often find the most unhappy people because they are disconnected from any spiritual foundation.

Why Spirituality?

Why exactly then does spirituality provide us deeper inner fulfillment? In the process of spirituality, we try to reconnect ourselves with our original source (The Divine, God, Allah, Jehovah, Krishna, etc.). In the process of reestablishing this relationship, we experience an intense, ever-increasing experience of bliss. Because of experiencing this bliss, we feel happy and joyful all the time without needing anything material to make us happy.

We become unconditionally happy, not just happy if things go the way we want to, and it feels incredible. You no longer have to spend your time thinking about what might make you happy, you actually are happy all the time and don’t need to worry about finding happiness because it’s already with you.

Conclusion

So to recap everything, when you’re happy, you don’t need to search for happiness because you already have it with you. You can achieve it through living a spiritual, enlivening life, rather than a materialistic, frustrating life. If you want to learn more about how to live a fulfilling spiritual life, check out my reading list here.

About the Author

Akshay Gupta is a published author and a graduate student of Religion at Duke University.

1: The Journey Home by Radhanath Swami

One man’s journey for higher truth leads him to all sorts of wild adventures and ultimately to a higher understanding of what brings true joy.

Get it here.

2. The Journey Within by Radhanath Swami

Sequel to previous book. Teaches you how to achieve the highest joy through the simple process of bhakti-yoga. Great nuggets of wisdom here.

Get it here.

3. A Comprehensive Guide to the Bhagavad Gita by H.D. Goswami

A wonderful translation introduction to one of the most influential and profound books written. Will give you some much needed insight to live a balanced, peaceful life in these crazy times.

Get it here.

4. The Science of Self Realization by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Read it free online here.

A compilation of the teachings of one of the greatest spiritual teachers to have ever lived. Very profound wisdom to help you live a more joyful life.

5. Bhagavad Gita As It Is by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

A very comprehensive guide to the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most comprehensive books on spiritual there is. There’s a lot of profound wisdom in it to help you find a true path to fulfillment.

Read it free online here.