We were too often made to believe that happiness is only an illusion, a hope, a never-ending quest or a question of aptitude, a goal that can only be fulfilled after death or a painful apprenticeship. Happiness is also often misperceived as a notion of perfection or as the possession of material goods, which are accessible to a happy few... Let's move on and abandon these beliefs. This is the 21st century and happiness is no longer a luxury or a frivolity. Happiness is a real mental and emotional state. It is sometimes easier to understand this statement once we experience the pain of being unhappy. As each of us has his own definition of happiness, there is as many definitions of happiness as humans on Earth. What is yours?

Asking yourself the right questions about happiness is the path to finding the right answers and becoming a happy citizen of the world, free to make your own choices. To reinvent the world, you need to reinvent yourself. It all depends exclusively on ourselves: we all have the ability to be happy, but most of the time we create our own obstacles. The majority of people have not been taught that they can chose their life so they get carried away by the stream. In the end, they don’t like who they are, what they do or what they have and they feel unhappy.

Did you know? A person has approximately 60,000 thoughts per day and 95% of these thoughts are identical to those of the previous day. Only 8% of our fears are justified. These thoughts are fears produce “cortisol”, a distress neurotransmitter when produced at a high level. To escape this vicious circle and better develop our capacity to experience a more permanent state of happiness, we have to better manage these thought habits. But how?

• By becoming aware of your brain mechanisms,
• By finding new ways to perceive reality around you using your five senses,
• By becoming fully aware that the mind reflects on the body and vice versa,
• By understanding how the information is processed by your neurotransmitters and how they transform it into positive actions and emotions.

Having this knowledge may help change your mind’s habits and better manage your choices and decisions. By doing so you’ll like what you are and what you do. It will be a real progress in the history of humanity and a gift to be transmitted to our children. Saving happiness is as important as saving the planet.

The Right to Happiness is the human’s right to live for oneself, to choose one’s own individual happiness and to work toward its achievement, as long as one respects the same right for others. It means that the collective cannot decide the purpose of one’s existence, nor prescribe a choice for their happiness. As Ayn Rand wrote in “The Virtue of Selfishness”: “It means that a man has the right to take the actions he deems necessary to achieve his happiness; it does not mean that others must make him happy”. Pierre Dac also said: “Although each of us considers to be entitled to happiness, the majority of people is unconsciously stuck in misfortune […]”. We can become the masters of the game or remain the slaves of our beliefs… a famous writer once apostrophized me saying: “How can you talk about the Right to Happiness when some people don't even have a roof?” But what if these people homeless condition stemmed from the fact that they were not allowed to exercise their right to Happiness… This may be a better question to ponder…

If the Right to Happiness did not exist, it would be written in the Constitution of several countries (United States of America, for instance)? Happiness has been one of the constitutional themes ever since the United States Declaration of Independence (1776). Right to Happiness It is present in the Constitutions of Japan (1947), South Korea (1948), France (1958 – preamble) and Bhutan (2008). Likewise, the French Declaration of Human and Civic Rights (of 26 august 1789) as well as the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man (1948) mention happiness. In the United States, thirty-one States also introduced it in their constitutions and there have been 90 Supreme Court cases since 1821 that used the expression ‘pursuit of happiness’.