Happiness is the word
Nearly every time you see him, he’s laughing, or at least smiling. And he makes everyone else around him feel like smiling. He’s the Dalai Lama, the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet, a Nobel Prize winner, and an increasingly popular speaker and statesman. What’s more, he’ll tell you that happiness is the purpose of life, and that “the very motion of our life is towards happiness.” How to get there has always been the question. He’s tried to answer it before, but he’s never had the help of a psychiatrist to get the message across in a context we can easily understand. Through conversations, stories, and meditations, the Dalai Lama shows us how to defeat day-to-day anxiety, insecurity, anger, and discouragement. Together with Dr. Cutler, he explores many facets of everyday life, including relationships, loss, and the pursuit of wealth, to illustrate how to ride through life’s obstacles on a deep and abiding source of inner peace.
If you want to be happy, let go off the need to always be right. Agreeing with others all the time can be a way to create a harmonious relationship, but sometimes it can be counterproductive. Furthermore, always agreeing with others can be a source of frustration and dissatisfaction. The need to always be right can be a big barrier to happiness because it can lead to a sense of rigidity and limitation. Happiness is found in the freedom to express one’s opinion respectfully and to accept the opinions of others. When we learn to give up the need to always be right, we can embrace diversity and learn to see things from another perspective. In this way, we can find greater harmony and peace in our lives and learn to appreciate the opinions of others.
