Almost everyone is waiting for something to happen… Waiting to reach some goal to be happy. Waiting to find the right person, save enough money for a house, pay down debt… Too often happiness is always around the corner… or, a more accurate metaphor, at the end of the rainbow.
Happiness is a simple conscious choice – and does not depend on your current situation or circumstances. As soon as you base your happiness on anything outside of your own self, it slips through your fingers and is gone. If you reminisce on happy events from the past, you’ve lost the happiness of the moment. You only feel the “missing” of the happy moments of the past that are gone. If you are waiting for some state of life (graduate, new job, pay down debt, waiting to “get” something or “have” someone in your life), then you are in a position of wanting something to happen…waiting for it to happen…putting your happiness on hold. You are again feeling things from a position of lack – living without happiness because it lies in the future. What’s more, the moment you had been waiting for, should it arrive, will at some point be gone. The happiness that was once coming in the future will be gone in the past…again leaving you empty. The answer is that happiness is already within you… here…now.
Happiness is an emotional feeling that comes from within yourself, and is not dependent on anyone else’s opinion of you, does not need anyone else’s approval, and does not depend on luck or current circumstances in any way… Happiness is an enjoyment of life – feeling in the moment… feeling connected, feeling alive… There are wonderful experiences and there are terrible experiences, and everything in between…but you are alive and there is an immense and wonderful appreciation that can be had for all things you experience in life… experiences that make you into the person you have become, that have given you the energy to be and do and create… to live and enjoy life.
A very simple metaphor that I like to use is to think of what makes a great movie great….There is no movie that I’ve ever seen where everything happens perfectly…goes exactly as planned…Where everything works out and nothing bad ever happens. Nobody on this planet would sit through the first 10 minutes. But cliffhangers… drama… action… excitement…love…loss…everything from tragedies to tearjerking romances…. THAT is what grabs us. THAT is what makes for an interesting experience that keeps us on the edge of our seats. Seeing the main character work through the lulls and depressed states, cope with inevitable losses, face challenges, overcome the odds….If that is what makes for a great movie, why would we want anything less for our lives?