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    Happiness is You
    Happiness is You
    Happiness is You
    Ebook122 pages1 hour

    Happiness is You

    By Siddhartha Gautam

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    About this ebook

    You hold the key to your own happiness.

    This is the most important message in motivational speaker and entrepreneurship educator Dr. Siddhartha B. Gautam’s debut that combines the ancient wisdom from his native India with the practical knowledge of his adopted American homeland. Everyone wants to live a happier life and Dr. Gautam demonstrates how to remove the impediments to happiness that exist in our daily lives, discover the divinity within us all, and cultivate new habits that bring joy. For those stuck in a state of unhappiness, boredom, confusion, and discontent, or for those who are questioning their lives, his storytelling style and practical advice is a warm, welcome embrace guiding you to achieve a greater sense of satisfaction and fulfillment.

    A guide for unlearning some of the bad habits of the modern age such as surrounding ourselves with noise and distractions, accumulating too many worldly possessions, and chasing after temporary pleasures instead of lasting happiness, Gautam provides the knowledge necessary to transition into cultivating good habits like silence, simplicity, compassion, industriousness, generosity, and healthiness. And once through with the summaries and interactive exercises that accompany each chapter, you will have a personalized daily checklist that will help ensure that happiness becomes your habit.

    Demonstrating how to weave the habit of happiness into the fabric of daily life, Gautam’s goal is to make certain that you are never again subject to the externally driven ups and downs. Teaching that we can incorporate happiness into our lives without having to become a hermit, take a pilgrimage, or spend all day in silent meditation, Happiness is You: By Making a Habit of Happiness, You Can Experience Bliss in Your Daily Life provides all you need to start living a happier, more fulfilling life—today.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSTEP Press
    Release dateAug 31, 2012
    ISBN9781624330018
    Happiness is You
    Author

    Siddhartha Gautam

    Siddhartha B. Gautam earned his PhD in financial economics and is a devoted scholar of the Vedic scriptures. Uniquely qualified to bridge Eastern and Western cultures in this practical guide to happiness, Dr. Gautam has more than forty years of experience as an educator and motivational speaker as well as a lifelong interest in spirituality, meditation, and yoga. Born and educated in India, he became a successful entrepreneur in America before joining the faculty of Methodist University in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he founded the Center for Entrepreneurship and has served as its director for thirty-eight years. Being intimately familiar with both finance and entrepreneurship, Dr. Gautam also realized that success in business does not always translate into personal happiness. Dr. Gautam is in demand as a motivational speaker at international conferences and conventions and has traveled to more than thirty countries, addressing fifteen to twenty such audiences each year.

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      Book preview

      Happiness is You - Siddhartha Gautam

      Happiness Is You

      By making a habit of happiness, you can

      experience bliss in your daily life

      By

      Dr. Siddhartha B. Gautam

      Smashwords Edition

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      This book is also available in print at most online retailers.

      Copyright © 2012 Dr. Siddhartha B. Gautam

      All rights reserved.

      ISBN: 0615633439

      ISBN 13: 9780615633435

      eBook ISBN: 978-1-62433-001-8

      Library of Congress Control Number: LCCN: 2012938320

      STEP Press

      Fayetteville, NC

      Published by STEP Press at Smashwords

      DEDICATION

      This book is dedicated to my parents whose life was a living example of happiness and simplicity. As a first-hand witness to the genuine embodiment of happiness in their day-to-day existence, I remain eternally grateful to them for having imparted these important life skills to me.

      Table of Contents

      1 Happiness Is You

      2 True Happiness Is the Goal

      3 Silence Is Golden

      4 The Magic and Mystery of Simplicity

      5 Compassion Increases Happiness

      6 Work Is Worship

      7 Giving Is Getting

      8 Healthiness Is Happiness and Vice Versa

      9 The Habit of Happiness

      10 Happiness Checklist

      Appendix: More on yoga and meditation

      1

      Happiness Is You

      A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

      - Lao-tzu

      I have often used this quotation in my motivational talks around the country, and this is the way you hear the words of this Chinese philosopher quoted most often. But I have also seen it translated from the original Chinese this way: The journey of a thousand miles begins beneath your feet. That subtle difference is the way I want to begin this book.

      There are so many books about happiness on the market right now. When I first began to write this book, I did a quick search and found more than 2,800 nonfiction books with the word happiness in the title, with a dozen of those published in the previous thirty days. Those numbers tell me at least two things: first, that millions of readers are searching for happiness, and second, that they are not finding it. Otherwise, why would books on the topic continue to be published?

      I too was once one of those seekers. Many years ago I came from my native India to America, the land of opportunity, where the roads are paved with gold. I devoted myself to the pursuit of the American dream, getting up at four o’clock in the morning and working till nine o’clock at night, building up my consulting practice. With hard work I achieved the dream: a house, two cars, and plenty of possessions to keep up with the Joneses.

      I had achieved everything, but somehow I had lost what my father back in India - who had never owned more than two pieces of clothing in his life - had always possessed: happiness.

      I began to realize this when I went back to India on a visit. When I first left for America, I had promised my father I would return home when I had saved ten thousand dollars. So he asked me if I had saved that much money yet. I had, but now I didn’t think that would be enough to sustain the lifestyle I had so quickly become accustomed to. I told my father, When I have one hundred thousand, I’ll come back.

      My father shook his head sadly. Son, you will never have enough savings and you will never come back. He could not understand why anyone with a vast fortune of ten thousand American dollars could possibly have need for more. Why are you worried? he asked, in his simple, straightforward way.

      His question continued to haunt me after I returned to America. Why was I worried? I had more than enough to meet my needs. I had a loving wife and family. I had the respect and admiration of my colleagues and clients. Why was I so restless? Why was happiness so elusive?

      One day I came across the answer in a twenty-two-page pamphlet by Swami Dayananda, printed in large letters on the plain, unadorned cover: The Problem is You. The Solution is You. Suddenly I realized that I was trying to find something outside, in the world, that truly only exists within, in myself. The swami’s words were uplifting and discouraging at the same time. Now I knew where true happiness could be found, and it was not on some remote mountaintop or at the bottom of the sea. It was within me. I was the answer to my quest. But if happiness was really so close, why wasn’t I experiencing it? Because I was also the problem. I myself was the obstacle that separated me from bliss.

      Is it hard to understand how something can be both the problem and the solution? The swami illustrated what he meant with a story about a man who sat down to read the newspaper one morning but couldn’t find his reading glasses. He searched the drawers of his desk, all over the table, even on the floor. Where are my glasses? he shouted so loudly that his whole family came running to help. Finally his youngest son pointed to the glasses, which were sitting on top of the man’s head. He’d had them all along. He had been searching high and low for something that he possessed the whole time. He was the problem and he was the solution. But - and here’s a key point for relentless seekers of happiness - the reason he was the problem was that he didn’t know he was the solution. He was ignorant of what he had readily within his grasp.

      When we seek our happiness outside ourselves - by acquiring more possessions, by pursuing a better job, by accumulating more money - we are like the man fruitlessly searching for his glasses. Just as he convinced himself that his glasses were hopelessly lost, we can convince ourselves that we are unhappy. That is the power the mind holds over us.

      Yet the mind can also work to our advantage. We have all experienced moments when everything seems to be going wrong: You miss the bus. It starts to rain. A truck comes by and splashes the water from a puddle all over your clothes. Your umbrella breaks. You arrive at work an hour late - wet, dirty, and mad - only to realize it’s a Saturday and you didn’t need to come in at all. How do you react? Do you scream and rant? Do you break down in tears? Or do you have a good laugh at yourself? Look carefully at the situation. The facts are the same: you are wet and dirty, with a broken umbrella and spoiled clothes. But your response to the situation determines how you feel about it. You control whether you are happy or unhappy.

      As the swami says, All that is required to be free from sadness is that you look at yourself as you are. The more I thought about that statement, the easier it became to understand what had been so mystifying before. My father was content with his two pieces of clothing because he knew who he was and where his true happiness dwelt. Yet I knew very successful businessmen who were never content with their big houses, fancy cars, and many possessions because they were too busy pursuing happiness to ever truly experience it. I realized I was one of those people. I was the problem.

      But the good news was that I was also the solution. Now that I knew where true happiness could be found, the challenge became removing the impediments in my life that separated me from it. It was the difference between following a map to find buried treasure and actually doing the digging to get to the treasure. The task was simple but not easy. I began to dig.

      I started to look at myself as I am, to strip away all of those trappings that I thought defined me. I was not the house or even the neighborhood I lived in. If I bought a different house or moved to a different city, I was still myself. I was not the car I drove. I had owned many different cars and none of them had ever changed who I was. In fact, none of my possessions had influenced my basic personality. A new gadget might make my life easier or a new suit might lift my spirits, but I was still the same person on the inside.

      Think about that for a moment. How much of your own unhappiness is rooted in this common misunderstanding of self? It’s not surprising how often we fall prey to this faulty reasoning, especially since the whole industry of retail sales is devoted to it. The underlying message is that if you just buy this particular item, it will make you happier. But then, of course, it doesn’t, so then you have to buy something else, something newer, brighter, shinier. The manufacturers and salespeople and advertisers of the world have convinced

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