I believe that true health can be defined as the state of being symptom-free and truly happy.
I’ve noticed something unusual. It is that when you ask many people who want to be happy what their definition of happiness is, they cannot give an answer. That’s certainly a problem pertaining to the pursuit of happiness; there doesn’t seem to be a (nearly) all-encompassing definition of what happiness is.
One of my great masters stated simply that the only way to define health is when a person is symptom-free and happy. And then I consulted a doctor about this issue. He said to me, “How can I treat people and deliver them from sickness if I don’t have a definition of what that delivery looks like?”
The part that he worked on was making sure that his patients were finding a path to being symptom-free. The part that he had no control over, though, was whether or not they were happy. He told me their happiness was connected to being symptom-free: He noticed throughout his long career that people who had the most positive attitudes and best outlooks on life were those who were in the best health physically. Those individuals did the best in difficult treatments and seemed to recover the fastest.
With that in consideration, the question then becomes how to create such a mentality in yourself. I don’t think that unhappy people deliberately want to be negative. Their negativity might just be a habit that they’ve grown into over a long time. We learned such habits and behaviors from others, and oftentimes we don’t realize how negatively we think, act, or express ourselves.
The way to change your attitude from negative to positive really only comes from practice. The first thing that you have to do is become aware of when you are speaking negative words to yourself. You then proactively correct yourself in your own mind.
When you are thinking negatively, stop yourself right in the middle of the thought that is forming in your head. Then try to refrain from what you’re thinking. From there, try to “re-frame” what you are thinking in a more positive way. Think of a solution to whatever is troubling you rather than focusing on, or even obsessing on, whatever problem is troubling you.
Always think positively. Always look for the positive in whatever situation you’re in. Be relentless in this. It will not always be easy. But it will become a habit over time, and it will be a significant factor in improving both your physical and your mental health.