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Life is a mystery and to understand it you need to decode it. If you are successful in cracking the code of life, you achieve happiness.
Believe me, the happiness code is no secret or difficult to implement in life.
Don’t be surprised by the title of the post and the talk of codes because it is not about software programming! It is neither about genetic engineering nor genomics. 🙂
However, if you are a computer programmer, you will like the interpretation of life codes in this post.
By codes, I mean certain principles or rules of life that will do you good if you follow them.
There are ways of life that can help you live easily. You always have an option of following a code of living that can help you enjoy life and be successful too.
You can say that this post is somewhat about the programming of life through practical ways to make it better.
Who wouldn’t like to live a better life? You sure wouldn’t mind cracking some magical formulas or secret codes to get it all in life, right?
Okay, tell me, what do you need in life to make it better?
I think I can read your mind, so I’ve listed some of the options below that you might be thinking right now:
Money. I know we all need money to live a comfortable life, so I agree with you.
Girlfriend or a boyfriend. Well, we do need a companion, and if you can get a soulmate, that’s the best.
Good physique. Oh yes, you can impress others with a good body. More so, a healthy body will also help you be mentally healthy.
Now your mind is flooding with more desires and requirements – you need an expensive car, a lavish house, the latest mobile, branded clothes, and this and that!
And I agree with you – ALL of these things can make your life better.
But have you ever thought that what you try to achieve through these materialistic things are eventually some abstract qualities of life.
That’s right.
Whatever you do, indirectly you try to achieve “PHP” – PHP here stands for Peace, Happiness, and Prosperity (and not Hypertext Pre-processor, the HTML-embedded scripting language). 🙂
Actually, no matter what your beliefs are, the path of life you take, or which corner of the world you live in, your ultimate aim in life is to be happy.
Yes, its the happiness code that you really need instead of loads of material goods!
So, why not get “PHP” directly instead of taking the indirect, long route?
Why not take a shortcut in place of spending all your time and effort doing tens of things, do a few simple things to get more? Does it make sense?
But for that you need to know the code to get direct access to PHP in life. I bet you want to know about it, right?
I won’t keep you guessing, so here it is. Let’s crack the code of life to achieve peace, happiness, and prosperity!
The CSS Code Of Life
In computer programming language, CSS means Cascading Style Sheets. If you are a WordPress blogger, you must have come across this term.
In this post, “CSS” is the seed code to get the fruit of “PHP” in life. You can program your life using the principles of CSS.
Here, CSS stands for Compassion, Spirituality, and Self-improvement.
Now, that’s very simple. In fact, it is one of the basics of life that everybody knows, so what’s so special about it?
The only specialty of the act of compassion, spirituality, and self-improvement is that it can easily, directly, and quickly get you long-term happiness, peace, and prosperity in life.
This is such a simple happiness code of life, but sadly, most of us aren’t able to understand it to implement it in our lives.
Don’t take it personally, as I’m relating to it in general terms. If everybody starts practicing CSS in their lives, wouldn’t this world be a better place to live in?
What does the world need now? Read this Aha!NOW post to know and reflect upon.
The Golden Rule
Do you know the golden rule of life?
We mostly use and refer to this rule but do not realize the power of this maxim of life.
Wikipedia defines Golden Rule as the ethic of reciprocity. This ethical code of life states –
One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.
One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated (also known as the Silver Rule).
Now, if you are a blogger and a member of the ABC, you know the meaning and value of reciprocity. It is a two-way relationship formed by the act of equal and mutual exchange.
Not only the ABC members, I think most bloggers know the power of reciprocation, which means if you want more comments, shares, and visits on your blog – then you should visit other blogs and share their posts as well as comment too.
I don’t want to give a religious tone to this post, but I can’t help mention that the golden rule of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is a part of the core of all religions.
Though this text may be taken from the Bible, all major religions of the world follow this principle and term it in their own ways.
This principle of empathy is also the foundation for cultivating compassion in life.
Compassion
If you want others to care for you, you should care for others. Fair enough?
According to the dictionary, caring is a loving feeling. It is a feeling and exhibition of concern and empathy for others.
You care for your family, friends, partner, and you can even care for strangers.
Caring gives rise to compassion, which is a deep awareness of sympathy for another’s suffering with a desire to help alleviate it.
Compassion leads to Altruism. Altruism is the principle or practice of concern for the welfare of others.
By being compassionate, you tend to donate to charities, volunteer to help suffering people, or render your services and time free of charge in the welfare for others.
According to Greater Good of Berkeley University, Altruism makes us happy, healthy, more loving, and a better human being.
See, you don’t have to buy anything or possess anybody to be happy. You just need to crack the code of life to get to the basics and unveil the mystery.
As per the Pursuit of Happiness website, “People who care for others’ well-being through acts of altruism, volunteering, or formation of communal relationships seem to be happier and less depressed.”
We now know for sure that compassion begets long-term happiness in life. Tweet
How to Develop Compassion and Altruism
Caring becomes meaningful when you get down to implementing the care, selflessly. In fact, you need to program your life to selflessly help people.
According to a study and this article, compassion can be developed, and it is a skill that can be learned. Your brain can be trained to act compassionately and thus achieve happiness.
Here are some ways to develop compassion:
Believe in compassion –
Compassion is the magic potion for happiness. Here is the master saying it himself as you read above:
“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” ~ Dalai Lama
Compassion will help you change your perspective and make you more positive. You’ll become an understanding and an easy going person, and be more kind and loving.
The first step to any self-development process is to believe – have the belief that compassion will cure your sufferings and make you happy.
Be compassionate for yourself –
Learning and practicing to be compassionate starts with you. If you are kind to yourself, you will be kind to others. If you love yourself, you’ll be able to love others.
Love and feel good about yourself. Forget the painful past and let it go. Forgive and accept yourself, and be grateful to your life.
With every breadth, open your heart and feel the love flowing through your heart and body. Think that you are the kindest person on the planet – and gradually you become what you think.
During this process of developing self-compassion, you may experience some barriers like frustration, resentment, sorrow, etc.
You need to let go of them and understand that this is detoxification of your heart, so good for you in a way.
Keep your focus on being kind and loving. You’ll feel good and forgive yourself as well as embrace yourself.
Next, you spread your compassion universally to your near and dear ones, and to strangers or even to those who do not wish well for you.
Practice compassion meditation for others –
When you feel the kindness and love within yourself, it is time to develop compassion for others by practicing compassion meditation.
It is just like normal meditation, but here you focus on the person for whom you have empathy and care about sincerely.
You open the floodgates of your heart and let the love flow because you wish well for the being of your focus.
Initially, you can use words and phrases like “May you be free from suffering and be healthy”, “Wish your life be filled with love and happiness”.
In fact, any good and positive thought that comes to your mind will help. It has to be intentional, coming straight from the bottom of your heart.
Feel and mean what you say in your mind, being focused and relaxed. Visualize the person or the being getting well and feel happy about it.
Eventually, you’ll learn to be compassionate by just expressing your kind and loving feelings without the need of words.
Read this article to learn more about how to practice compassion meditation.
Realize the oneness –
When practicing compassion for others, understand that all human beings are more or less similar.
Feel the oneness and as you do that, you’ll experience the sorrow and suffering of others. Send your feelings and wishes of love and care as you would do to your own self.
Feel for the person in suffering as if you were in the person’s place, and it happened to you.
Make no distinction and have no doubt – love others as you love yourself.
Don’t get confused between love and lust, as we are dealing with unattached and unconditional true love as a fellow being.
Make compassion a part of your life and daily habit. Practice gratitude and thankfulness.
Be thankful to everyone. Feel grateful for everything in life. Be giving.
Spirituality
Being spiritual does not necessarily mean being religious. While as a religious person, you can also be spiritual.
Spirituality can exist independently and universally with no relation to any religion. However, every religion deals with spirituality in its own way.
Spiritualism is concerned about the personal and subjective experiences rather than being based on any religious text or teachings.
As a spiritual person, you are concerned with the spirit or soul, which is defined as the vital principle or animating force within living things.
In clearer and larger terms, spirituality involves a sense of connection to something bigger than us, a force that is powerful, universal, and eternal.
Spirituality is also the belief in transformation and progression of the state of your spirit or your Self, becoming better, free, and pure.
Spirituality helps us dig deeper within us and understand ourselves as well as understand others. It helps develop a feeling of oneness.
As a spiritual person, you are focused on self-development and expand yourself to embrace humanity as your religion. Spirituality is all about understanding life, self-discovery, and self-realization.
Many believe that spirituality helps develop inner peace and lays the foundation of happiness in life. Tweet
How to become spiritual
According to Wikipedia, spiritual practices may include meditation, mindfulness, prayer, the contemplation of sacred texts, and ethical development.
Love and compassion are often described as the mainstay of spiritual development.
Here are a few ways to become spiritual –
Find your life purpose –
Spirituality also deals with questions and thoughts about your existence. To become spiritual, you need to philosophize about life and try to understand why you exist.
As everything in nature has a purpose, you too have a purpose in life. That is, in fact, a secret code of life that can help you live a meaningful life.
Practice Spiritual Meditation –
To be spiritual, you need to control your mind and connect to your spirit. The mind can be a deterrent to your spiritual progress because it likes chaos, disorder, and definitely resists being reined-in.
Meditation is just the right practice to go to your inner depths and seek solutions to your problems.
Of course, there are various types of meditation like Transcendental Meditation (TM) and Mindful Meditation that are basically used to relieve stress and mindfulness. Meditation helps you stay aware and attentive.
Indulge in prayers and reminder acts –
Don’t ever underestimate the power of prayers. They are often regarded as the direct connection to the higher self or even to your powerful potential, hidden in your depths.
You also need to keep reminding yourself of your spiritual nature and qualities that set you apart from others.
For that, you should keep reading spiritual material and take part in spiritual discussions to enhance your knowledge.
Get curious about life –
You should use meditation and other activities to introspect and reflect on your life to sync yourself with your real self.
Always question about the events, processes, and things in life and try to seek their answers. Spirituality is a quest of life, and you need to get proactive in its development.
Become a helpful person –
Stripping down to the basics, we are all spirits in material bodies living in this world. We encourage spiritual development by helping other spiritual beings.
Yes, we are the yet-to-discover-ourselves spiritual beings. Other people and events indirectly help us reveal our true identity to us.
If you help others, others too will help you in reciprocation, and you will exchange love and kindness to brew peace in your lives.
Self-Improvement
No one is perfect. However, we can certainly improve ourselves.
The act and practice of improving yourself is called self-improvement.
The dictionary defines self-improvement as the improvement of one’s knowledge, status, or character by one’s own efforts.
Actually, self-improvement has a broad scope.
It can include improvement in terms of personal development like habits and lifestyle, or in terms of professional terms like leadership skills and time management.
Self-improvement can be applied to achieve better health, relationships, skills, career, personal growth, and life.
Overall, self-improvement is the process of making positive changes in yourself related to various aspects of your life.
To make yourself better than what you are, you need to adopt change. You need to be willing to change, for the better.
If you learn positive and productive habits, behaviors, and thoughts, you are more likely to succeed in your personal, social, and professional aspects of life.
As an improved person, you might excel in your work and remove obstacles in the path of prosperity, to achieve financial and professional wellness.
How to improve yourself
There is no secret to improving oneself, and it is no rocket science either.
If you really feel that you should better yourself and have a strong desire to do so coupled with equally strong belief and determination, you will find your way.
However, the below-mentioned steps will help you take the right directions and approach.
Make a Mission Statement –
First, find out what you want to be or do in life. Imagine yourself ten years from now and visualize how, what, and where you want yourself to be.
Based on your perceptions and desires aka your vision, create your mission statement and promise yourself to make it true.
Make a plan –
Be honest with yourself and evaluate your present standing. This fair assessment will reveal the gap between your present and future life.
You need to make S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely) goals to make your vision a mission possible.
Be Positive and embrace change –
Adopt optimism and expect a positive change in your life. Keep faith in yourself and gear yourself to embrace the change that is required for your success, and be focused.
If need be, change your habits, routine, and attitude.
Be disciplined –
You achieve success through hard work. For that, you need to discipline yourself and be determined. Make your own rules, but don’t fake them.
Make it a habit to complete your objectives, achieve your targets, and accomplish your goals.
Learn to manage –
If you want to have a successful life, you need to manage your life properly. This includes managing your time, family, tasks, health, and other affairs.
Take tips from the masters, learn from the coaches, or join related courses to help you manage your life better. Always keep learning.
Don’t Procrastinate –
The last thing you can do is to go soft on your mission and stall it to make it impossible. Do not delay or postpone, or get lethargic and hopeless in the middle of your mission.
Be action oriented and always believe in yourself. Don’t ditch your dreams; don’t compromise for donuts when you deserve diamonds!
“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Wrapping Up
The secret to achieving peace, happiness and prosperity (PHP) in life is finally achieved!
Okay, probably this wasn’t a secret, but you now know the complete code to make your life better. Cracking the happiness code is now easy.
Developing compassion will help you achieve happiness, cultivating spirituality will give you inner peace, and practicing self-improvement will bring you prosperity.
Life will no longer be a mystery if you apply the CSS code in your life. You will program yourself in such a way that winning will become a hard-to-break habit.
It’s no magic but besides happiness and peace, you will also receive all those things as sweet byproducts of your hard labor that you desired – such as money, material things, and what not!
It’s wise to seed compassion, spirituality, and self-improvement early in your life to reap the PHP rewards later.
Over To You –
What do you want in life and what do you do for that? Do you think compassion and spirituality help in life? What other tips would you add to these self-improvement steps? Do you have any special rules or codes in life that you follow to achieve PHP? What’s your happiness code? Share in the comments.
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