A Foundation for Happiness What are you doing to build a foundation for happiness? A foundation is sturdy and long lasting. It does not fall at whim. During times of tumult, it sustains. A foundation is built to last. Happiness needs a strong foundation, because it is not circumstantial. It is a state of mind, a way of responding to life’s events. Moments of sadness and disappointment are normal and to be expected, but if you are happy, you can let them pass and draw strength from your foundation. Happiness is deep, stable, and unfleeting. Pleasure is not to be mistaken for happiness. Pleasure is temporary. If the pleasure is a result of good intentions, it will contribute to a foundation for happiness. Otherwise, it will detract from it. Every decision you make either adds or detracts from the foundation. If it doesn’t add, then it detracts. There is no neutral effect, but each decision affects your foundation in varying degrees. How do you know if a decision is adding or detracting to your foundation for happiness? A decision that adds, contributes to a deep feeling of wellbeing. It resonates, like an echo, throughout your life. It creates more positive, residual effects. A decision that detracts often brings temporary pleasure, but after the pleasure has run its course, it brings you down. Rarely do we choose to do anything that we know will affect us negatively. Even people who are self-destructive are choosing that path because they think the self-destruction will contribute to happiness. Even suicide is seen as a relief by those who commit it. But for most people, pleasure disguises the very decisions that affect us negatively. That is why we need to be extra wary and attuned to these. Our tendency is to sacrifice long-lasting happiness for temporary pleasures. These feel good for the moment, but after the experience, we feel more empty and depressed. Some examples are substance abuse, watching too much tv, and overeating. Often these pleasurable detractors of happiness become bad habits – we do them over and over again, addicted to the temporary pleasure but unaware that they’re detracting from our foundations for happiness. Each decision that detracts from your foundation digs a deeper hole for yourself. If you tune into your life, you will notice that the decisions you make are recurring patterns. The decisions are not isolated incidents. Some call these patterns “karmic patterns” – patterns that form as a result of karma. Even though we are born with karma, we have free will to change. Recognize and break the patterns that detract from your happiness. Replace them with patterns that add to your happiness. That way, you will create good karma for yourself.