How to Live a Positive Life

When I was first attracted to the concept of veganism, I wasn’t particularly keen on the emotional aspect of it. I thought it was something you do for moral reasons, or for your body, or for the environment. It never occurred to me that veganism would help me start my own journey into living a more peaceful, harmonious, and happier life. Now, I’m not here to tell you that every vegan is a positive person. In fact, that would be completely untrue. But I do believe that because veganism is a concept that is so rooted in helping other beings/things, you become selfless by performing it. But today, however, is not about veganism. It is about establishing yourself in a positive mindset to live a more positive life – something that veganism teaches us but we may fail to apply ourselves.

Recently, I listened to a podcast by Adam Grant – Work Life Balance – where he interviews Nobel-Prize winning economist Daniel Kahneman. Although most people see Dr. Kahneman as an economist, in the podcast he refers to himself as a psychologist studying human behavioral patterns and systems. When asked about happiness, Dr. Kahneman speaks of rejecting the movement of increasing happiness and, instead, focusing on “eliminating misery.” This is a powerful idea and becomes quite evident when you delve deeper into the concept. Humans become so focused on increasing their own happiness that they push down the misery inside of themselves. But misery is misery. It is bound to resurface as some point of time or the other – especially if you haven’t cut the root of misery out of your life. And, unfortunately, no one is talking about how to alleviate your misery and come out of it. Everyone says that to become less miserable you should focus on the positive aspects of your life. But this is only a mask that veils the hidden misery underneath. With this in mind, I constructed my own approach to dealing with happiness in my own life.

I believe that misery (self-misery) is rooted in yourself. I believe that everyone is the cause of their own misery. You have the entire ability to stop the pain that you are in once you recognize what is making you miserable. Although we relate much of the suffering we undergo to external causes, it cannot be said that these external causes are our sole cause of misery. Humans are bound to go through trials and tribulations in their external lives. That is life. One cannot say that they have lived if they have not gone through happiness, love, suffering, and pain. So, yes. Every human will have conflict in their life and every human will have harmony in their life – that is the nature of human life. Just because you equate your suffering to something that someone did to you 20 years ago, or something that someone said to you, or something that happened to you, your misery already existed inside of yourself before that. Because of an external cause, you realized that misery inside of yourself, but the external cause was not the reason for the misery. Happiness comes when you realize this. It is extremely easy to find fault and pin point others for putting you into to misery. It is extremely difficult to find fault within ourself and call ourselves wrong. We aren’t willing to admit our fault and say that we made our mistake: ego. Ego makes us so unwilling to let go of our staunch opinions and beliefs, that we don’t forgive others for mistakes and we hold on to the pain we felt from the moment they hurt us. But in the end, we are only hurting ourself. Those people forgot about what they did to us and move on with their life, and we do not. We hold on to it, think about it every single day, and surface emotions that push us deeper into suffering. So how do we deal with this?

The best way to come out of your misery is to let go of the concept of “I.” Realize that humans make mistakes and that you are no different. You will make mistakes, learn, make mistakes again, and learn again. If you hold your beliefs too tightly to yourself that there is not room for improvement – you are unable to see the flip side of the coin – you will sink into the sea of your own misery. But, if you can recognize that you are bound to come across conflict in your life, you are bound to come across happiness in your life, and accept that fact – you will automatically be lifted out of your misery. You will realize that external conflict exists but it comes and goes: it is impermanent. Even though it may exist now, it will not exist forever. This is the way to make peace with a positive life – by making peace with your suffering.