Real happiness is born within

Life isn't always great, and it always seems to be the way that when I'm feeling a bit down, or over laden with problems I seem to see people everywhere, whether on television or in my life that are enjoying amazing fulfilled lives. I can't help but think ‘how come they're so happy? Why are they so cheerful, always laughing and kidding around, how do they do it even though they are subject to the same stresses and strains of life that we all are?' After some thought I realized – perhaps they understood that they had to work on their ‘self'.

How to get genuine happiness? Before you can expect anyone to love you, you have to master Step 1, and that is to love yourself.

It's hard to love yourself because to do so you have to accept yourself as you truly are. You will need courage to take a good long honest look at yourself, to realize that you are not perfect and to work on ways to improve yourself. Someone I once knew told me ‘loving means accepting' and it is so true.

Ok, so you've found your imperfections – how do you attain happiness despite these? Well, work on your future. Every time you do something to try to improve yours or others quality of life, both your subconscious and life will give you the equivalent reward. It doesn't have to be anything huge, even seemingly small efforts such as helping an old lady cross the road or tidying your room or house will count. If you fail an exam or test, try and try again.

Life can be seen as a great big score board – let's imagine you have a whiteboard hung up in your house. Every time you do something positive, mark yourself a point, no matter how small it is. Now imagine if you had a chance to do something positive throughout the day, perhaps more than once, but didn't. How would you feel if you looked at your scoreboard at the end of the day and there was nothing? Not a mark on it. Wouldn't you wish you'd given it a go?

The key to passing Step 1 is to know yourself both good and bad points and to learn to live with them whilst trying to improve them. Apply the same to other people. No one is perfect and as long as you accept and love them, the same will happen to you

So, ask me again, ‘how do you become happy'? A friend of mine put it in a nutshell and I am going to share with you what he said ‘Most of us know that laughter is the best medicine to life's aches and pain, but most of us don't know that the best kind of laughter is over self. Coz then you don't just become happy, you become free' Learn to laugh at yourself and your foibles and then you can be truly happy.