How to Be Happy - 10 Top Tips That Really Work!

1. Know where you’re going

Happy people tend to have clear, well-defined goals. Work out where you want to be and what you need to do to get there. Ensure your goals are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed).

2. Know why you’re going there

Developing a sense of life purpose will also markedly increase your chances of experiencing true happiness. As well as working out where you want to get to, make sure you have a good reason for why you’re trying to go there.

3. Go with your strengths

Work out what you’re good at and find ways to do it as much as possible. Happiness is not as much about fixing your faults and overcoming your weaknesses as it is about finding ways to focus your life on and around your talents and qualities.

4. Don’t go alone

Enlist the support of family and friends. Those who have good intimate relationships and those who actively and consistently work to improve the quality of their relationships tend to be happier. So invite others to join you in your endeavours, share your experiences, and don’t forget to also support them as well.

 

5. Go with a positive attitude

One of the most significant, contributing factors to happiness is optimistic thinking. Although you won’t always have a choice in determining what goes on around you, you will always have a choice in determining how you think about what goes on around you. This will largely determine the extent to which you are, or aren’t, happy.

6. Ensure you have the energy to go all the way

Being happy depends at least in part on being healthy. Being healthy depends on keeping active and exercising regularly, eating an adequate and well-balanced diet, and ensuring you attain enough sleep and rest.

7. Control which way you go

Happiness can be enhanced by maximising the control you have over your life. So learn and practice skills such as problem solving and time management, meditation and communication. At the same time, however, no one has complete control and so it is also important to be realistic and to accept that over which you have no control.

8. Maintain discipline along the way

Happiness is nothing more than a few simple disciplines practiced every day while misery is a few bad habits or errors of judgement repeated every day. Although happiness might not be yours today, you can certainly start to implement the strategies you need today. Maintain focus and you’ll be happy before you know it!

9. Be present every step of the way

Happy people tend to spend more time thinking about and “being in the present” as opposed to dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. Learn from your mistakes and plan to achieve, but practice living life in the moment and enjoy happiness now.

10. Go, go and keep going all the way

We all face obstacles and problems at times. Happy people expect this and adapt when necessary. All of the components outlined above are skills that can be learned. Just like any other skills, you’ll get better at utilising these strategies with practice and perseverance. Stick at it and happiness will be yours.

SC raises valid points on OBC quota

The Supreme Court has done well to raise issues that fly in the face of the UPA Government?s claimed logic behind its illconceived move to reserve 27 per cent seats in institutions of higher education, including acclaimed centres of excellence, for students from the so-called ?Other Backward Classes?. That the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act of 2007, whose passage in Parliament was greatly facilitated by the active collusion of the Opposition with the Treasury Benches, indicating that no party is immune to the lure of identity politics, is a deeply flawed law has been known ever since it was conceived by Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh. Yet, nobody in authority has had the courage to highlight the flaws lest it should displease the intended beneficiaries of such regressive quota politics.

Youth for Equality did put up a spirited fight, but it was doomed to fail in the absence of political support. However, it is to the credit of Youth for Equality that it has not entirely given up the fight against Singh?s dream of penalising meritorious students and degrading higher education; along with others, they have taken the issue to court. It is in this context that the Supreme Court, questioning the legality of the OBC quota in institutions of higher education, has asked the Government to explain how it has fixed the quantum at 27 percent and the criteria used for determining social and educational backwardness of castes and communities.

It has also questioned the Government?s decision not to remove the ?creamy layer? from the intended beneficiaries of its largesse. Those who dared oppose the OBC quota did raise these questions, only to be met with either devious obfuscation or arrogant silence. Recent surveys have indicated the OBC population is far less than what is claimed by those who wish to
subjugate higher education to caste politics. Curiously, although the dispute over the numerical
strength of each caste can be settled through a caste-based census, every Government has shied
away from ordering such an exercise.

That apart, there is the other issue of determining social and educational backwardness of communities:

Should the criteria be based on subjective interpretations or an objective assessment based on economic factors? Hopefully, the SC will succeed in forcing the Government to abandon its antediluvian quota policy. If that leaves our vote-bank dependent politicians smarting, so be it.