Control Your Desires And Be Happy

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”―Epicurus

All of us want things that somehow is unreachable. And the pain strikes in when we don’t get what we want. Desire creates pain and somehow we erase the pain and in the process, we learn a lot.

Desires can be due to dissatisfaction. We crave for a lot of things like for money, good health, good job, happiness, healthy relationships etc. If we don’t get what we want the hunger for the need stays alive. Humans are impossible, they never stop. Their desire can never end, it goes on. So even if we get what we want the fullness won’t last. Because our desire may shift to some other thing.

Buddha said, “Desire is suffering”. But not all forms of desires are painful. Extreme poverty and lack of something are painful. That little hope that tomorrow might be better than today gives us a sense of joy.

This lack of desire doesn’t mean that we will give up. We need to focus on more important things so that our desire for wanting things will shift. This way craving will no create pain.

The problems with cravings are that they are endless. Cravings never come to an end. If we desire to become rich then the desire will never end as there is no limit of being rich. We should enjoy life rather than working towards endless desires. Life is not a destination that we have to complete. It’s a beautiful process of enjoying life. And if we become greedy there is absolutely no way in which we can enjoy life. We need to be in our true self to control our desires. Running after these desires convert us to a different person whose aim in life is to fulfill these never-ending desires.

In a race, our motive is to win it. And if we don’t win we crave for it. We crave for the position and the medal which some other person got. Why can’t we just happy with our performance? We can be happy when these success and failures seem equal to us. It’s not an easy thing to follow. Many few can do it. The funda is to do things because we love doing it not because we need something out of it. If we understand this then we will be out of the craving situation. Our interest in doing things should be more important rather than the result.

Cravings are a part of our life. But there are ways to avoid them. It starts with loving yourself and pursuing your hobbies. Some people achieve their goal without any effort. And it’s not that they are not challenging. It’s because they don’t crave every thing. Craving pushes out our bad habits. We need to control them. Also when we are happy we don’t crave for things. We feel happy to do things and we enjoy the whole process of doing things.

"When you relinquish the desire to control your future, you can have more happiness."- Nicole Kidman