Happiness is not a goal to be achieved, but an emotion that is a by product of what you do.  Thinking in terms of whether you deserve or don’t deserve to be happy [...]]]> These thoughts are an edited version of an article by Dorothy Rowe, the respected author of Depression: The Way Out of Your Prison.

Happiness is not a goal to be achieved, but an emotion that is a by product of what you do.  Thinking in terms of whether you deserve or don’t deserve to be happy will stop you being happy.

There is nothing wrong with feeling sad, which is the appropriate emotion to feel after you have suffered a loss or disappointment.  Depression is not just being very unhappy. We become depressed when we blame ourselves for the disaster that has befallen us.

Being depressed means feeling that you are utterly alone, locked into some kind of horrible prison, where no comfort can reach you and you will not comfort yourself.  To create the conditions whereby happiness can blossom you have to do some or all of the following:

1. Understand that what you do is a result of how you have interpreted what happens, and that you are free to change your interpretations.
2. See yourself as valuable and acceptable. To do this, you may have to review your childhood and recognise that as a child you came to the conclusion that you must have been bad and unacceptable, otherwise the adults around you would not have treated you as they did. Look at this now from an adult’s perspective.
3. Listen to how you talk to yourself and if you are constantly criticising yourself and making impossible demands on yourself, stop doing it. Be your own best friend.
4. Cultivate the ability to live in the present, paying attention only to what is going on around you. By fretting about what has happened in the past and anxiously planning the future, we inevitably shut ourselves off from a great source of happiness – that of fully experiencing what is before us.
5. Use the ability to be in the present, every day giving yourself some little treats or reward. Do not do this because you deserve it, do it because it’s a nice thing to do.