Being happy is of the utmost importance. Success in anything is through happiness. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Happiness is defined in many different ways. Each one of us defines happiness as something particular to ourselves and who we believe we are.

But, it’s only when we find true happiness we truly understand its meaning.

Our modern lives are filled with Starbucks, Wal-Mart’s and Target’s.

Some of us define happiness as that first taste of coffee in the morning. We only view it as such because we’ve never seen true happiness or we’ve seen “glimpses” of happiness.

Through our lives we see glimpses or fleeting moments of happiness, the birth of a child, our wedding day. These are only glimpses of true happiness. We don’t think about the moments which come after, and if we do we believe there will be bliss as there was in those moments.

We rarely think about the times when our child will be a teenager and we want to strangle them, or when our partner does something to upset the relationship.

The glimpses of happiness give us a perception of that exists only for that moment, but when we see everything later in our lives we may see how naive we were at that moment or how young we were in our thinking or maybe physically.

Happiness is defined as the moment you feel alive. The moment you’re happier than you’ve ever been and though the glimpse of true happiness is stuck in the moment, what would you do to attain true happiness?

To reach for that cup of coffee and it no longer has that wonderful taste, but everywhere around you things are brighter, you notice your wife’s smile in a way you never had before or you sit in the car singing with your daughter because she wants to.

Society defines happiness by monetary means, can you buy this car or that house, but remember you can’t take those with you.

Happiness is something else, it makes you think about the way you treat people, the way you look at the world and possibly, and more importantly, how you view yourself.

We walk through our lives looking for happiness. We strive for it every day. We yearn for the feeling of satisfaction in our lives, but there’s always something missing in the equation, something small, something we’ve overlooked…ourselves.

Happiness can’t be gained by monetary means, it can’t be bought, and most importantly, we must look inside ourselves and see who we are to discover true happiness.

We must look at the life we’ve led, the actions we take and the way we run our lives in order to find happiness.

The glimpse of happiness is only that, a small look.

I’ll be honest, when I first looked at myself after beginning Transcendental Meditation, I didn’t like the person I was.

I talked down to my wife and kids, and I didn’t know who I was or what I was put here for.

After the first week of TM I sat down with my wife, apologized for the person I’d been and asked her for forgiveness and if we could keep going.

She looked at me as if I had something growing from my skull. It was that look that made me understand all the pain I’d put her through and all the things I’d have to make up for.

The one thing I discovered about the relationship I’d had with my wife before TM is that she loved me more than I loved her, and I’m trying to make up for that.

Today I still feel she cares more for me than I care for her, but I’m trying to be a better man for her and for our kids.

Realizing you’re not who you believed takes you out of your comfort zone and makes you look at yourself in ways you’d never do without help.

Today, I’m the happiest I’ve been in my life. My wife loves me, my kids are monkeys climbing over me whenever they get the opportunity and my family is proud of the man I’ve become in the past year.

There’s more important things than those you love being proud of you, being proud of yourself matters more, and today, after all that has happened, I’m proud of who I am now and the only person I need to approve of my life is the one typing this. He’s the only person whose happiness matters at the end.

There is nothing that can change the way I acted before TM, but TM has taught me that every day is a blessing and that every breath and every choice we make creates a better world for ourselves and those around us.

I choose to live in the moment of now and live in the life I have not one that can be bought, because honestly, happiness is never bought, it’s earned through pain, hardship and stress and at the end of our lives we can look at the people we’ve made happy and those are the people who love us.

It’s only after nearly losing everything I found true happiness.