THE HEART OF HAPPINESS!

By Lionel Ketchian

We recently celebrated Valentine's Day, so let's talk about matters of the heart. On Valentine's Day you think of love. But let me ask you this question; what is love? Of course it is about your feelings for another person. Where does love come from? I'll tell you where! Love comes from your happiness. Think about it for a minute. We talk about finding the love of our lives and living happily ever after. Do you know anyone that wants to get married so they can live unhappily ever after? I don't think so. Although many people fall in love to become happy, many eventually become unhappy nevertheless.

A happy heart is a loving heart! Happiness is where love comes from. When you are happy love is there. When you first fall in love, the other person seems so perfect. You don't see any faults, you see only beauty and you're in touch with only wonderful feelings for them. It may take days, months, or years, but you begin to wonder what happened to this person you fell in love with. Why have they changed so much? Did you really know them in the first place? What happened to them? Maybe it's you? Maybe you changed your expectations of them. Maybe, you fell out of happiness!

You cannot feel love toward another unless you are happy. Happiness is the foundation for love. Much of the time people want to be loved. They want to be loved because they do not love themselves. The reason for that is they are just not happy. If you can begin living your life with happiness, love would find you so fast, you would not believe what happened. The way it seems to happen is we are unhappy, so we need someone in our life to fill the void.

We go out and look for someone to love, desperately. Even if someone would, or could love us in that state we would still soon be unhappy. This is because we are unhappy and we are looking for someone to make us happy. Even if the other person you loved were happy it would not be enough to make you both happy.

We need to learn the art of Being Happy. Once we are happy we will go out and attract, or be attracted to someone who is sincerely happy. Instead of being unhappy and finding someone to fill the void, being happy allows us to find someone to share our joy. WOW! What a winning combination that would be. Two people who are happy could really find and share love, and it would be the real thing. Love can only grow in a happy environment, which is part of your very soul.

What is happiness? It is unconditional acceptance of life, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Once we can understand unconditional happiness we can love, and be loved. Part of what I am talking about is accepting yourself for all your parts, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Once you do that you realize you are good enough. In fact you're perfect! When you feel good about yourself it is then that you can improve yourself. In fact Being Happy is the best self-improvement exercise that I know of.

How many times have you heard that you need to learn to love yourself? People ask me if it is self-centered to love yourself. The answer is no! When you love yourself you are gentle on yourself, and you can more easily be that way with others. It's when you are self-centered, rather than self-loving that the problems start.

Self-centered people want to talk about themselves all the time. They don't really care about others. This is what a self centered person might say: "Oh, here I am talking about nothing but myself, I have been talking about myself for twenty minutes, enough of that. OK, it's your turn to talk about me." This is a joke of course, but there is a lot of truth to it.

Self-centered people want everyone else to tell him or her how great they are. They want other people to love them, but they can't love back. Why? The reason is; they are just not happy. A person who is self-centered is not Being Happy and must constantly look for happiness. Self-centered people have no love for themselves so they have none to give others.

A self-loving person is happy and wants to share their happiness and love with other people. Self-loving people love themselves, so they are in touch with love within themselves. That is where they get the love they have to give others. When you love yourself, you are connected to yourself. You know yourself, and you have healthy self-esteem. You love others as much as you love yourself.

It is so important to be happy. We must learn to detach our sense of worth from outside things and place it within ourselves for a real sense of worth. After all, how can you give love unless you have love to give? How can you give happiness, unless you have happiness? When you have happiness within you, you can reach within and give love to another.

If you want to live happily ever after, then be happy now. This is the way to real love. People stop loving because they decide things that have happened are more important than their happiness. If you want to love forever than don't give up your happiness. Allow Being Happy to show you the way to deal with obstacles and the problems that get in your way in life.

Remember no one is perfect. We are all doing the very best we can. Though it does not look like people are doing their best...they are. It may not be the best you can do, but given their life experience, fears, hopes, and thinking, it is the best they can do at the time. Let's not be too hasty to judge others, especially the ones we love.

Love flourishes in happiness, love multiplies and overflows in a rich and happy heart! Have a heart - Be Happy, and you will be more loving. Happy Valentine's Day! I Love You with a happy heart.