You decide!
First, decide to be happy. Ready? And if you decide to be happy, then be willing to do what it takes to be happy, okay?
What’s happiness?
Everyone thinks they want to be happy. But what’s “happiness”? When I was 5, happiness meant holidays with cousins. Later on, happiness came from video games, first dates, passing the CPA exam, getting a new job, finding love, and making partner. None of them provided lasting happiness. Perhaps because they all came from the outside.
Someday, happiness may also mean another long term romantic relationship, marriage, and children. Maybe they will prove more durable and consistent than the other forms of possible happiness!
What if we looked for happiness within? What if, deep down inside, we ARE happiness? What if happiness means contentment, the absence of desire, the desire for things to be different?
That’s true happiness. Contentment is a state of mind, so happiness is a state of mind that requires nothing to change. Nothing other than being present.
What does it take to be happy?
- Decide that it’s only found within. Give up searching outside.
- Decide that YOU have the power and responsibility to give happiness to yourself and others.
- Redefine happiness so that it can happen easily and frequently.
Who decides what happiness means, for YOU?
Do you want to decide when to be happy, or do you want someone else to decide for you? “I decide!!” Easy question. Of course we want to decide our own happiness ourselves, not someone else.
But if we decide to be in charge of our own happiness, then why did we give an external force, be it money, fame, status, or even another person the power to make us happy or unhappy? Why forgo happiness until the next promotion? Why let another person decide if we’re happy or not, by feeling unhappy when they’re not in our lives? We SAY we want happiness, but we DO things that make us unhappy.
Do you want to be happy all the time or once in a while? Do you want to make it easy for yourself to be happy, or hard?
“All the time!!” Says everyone, I assume. Of course I want to be happy all the time, every day if possible. Maybe you do too. But how often did we feel happy? If we want to be happy everyday, then we need to be happy WITH everyday. We need to be okay with everything that happens.
What does happiness mean to you?
If we’re only happy when we have that car, promotion, new house, then we make ourselves unhappy until then. If we get upset when it rains on a Saturday morning, then we make ourselves unhappy until the sun comes out.
Accept the things that we fear. If we fear poverty, illness, and disgrace, then imagine that we’re poor, sick, and humiliated and BE OKAY with it. Although many would say impossible to achieve, wouldn’t it be nice to be happy unconditionally, needing nothing and no one? Accept what you and I fear, in order to free ourselves.
What do you need to be happy? Your requirements of happiness?
In a way, we’ve decided what happiness means, whether we know it or not. We decided that we’d be happy ONLY IF this and that happens. We’d be happy if we got that promotion. If we married that amazing person. If we moved to that beautiful house. If we prevailed over our imagined rivals.
When we identify or create the conditions needed to find happiness, we make ourselves suffer, i.e., unhappy, until all those conditions are met. And if one or more conditions is outside your control (e.g., winning the Nobel prize, or Jenny texting you back), then even if you did everything within your power, your happiness may still never arrive.
When will all the conditions for our happiness be met? Why make ourselves suffer until then?
Redefine happiness so you can feel happier
I want happiness as often as possible. I hope you do too! In fact, I want to be happiness itself! Why wait? Start now and stay happy.
Conditional yes, but lower the conditions! One day, let’s be happy for no reason. Unconditionally. Until then, I might still need something or someone to help me. Maybe you do too. But that’s okay! Let’s try making the conditions as easily achieved as possible.
Redefine happiness? To be happy all the time requires making it easier to be happy. Lower the threshold of what it takes to be happy. So, if you defined happy to mean “marrying that one and only soulmate for me out of nearly 8 billion” or “winning that Olympic gold”, then you might feel empty until that happens. That’s a HIGH threshold. Plus it’s largely outside our control.
The higher the threshold of happiness, the unhappier we become
For this reason, a high threshold or definition of happiness, requiring a high standard and high risk of failure, not in our control, does not seem an efficient or promising way to happiness.
Defining happiness this way almost guarantees misery.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting an Olympic gold, or finding a one-in-a-multibillion soulmate. In fact, magic comes from those wishes becoming true. But the question is whether you want to NEED those things to be happy. Or said differently, are you willing to be unhappy until those happen? Are you willing to be UNHAPPY until you find your true love out of almost 8 billion? How about looking for your one true love AND be happy at the same time, while enjoying your life journey?
Create our own happiness!
If we defined being happy to mean “learning, growing, and serving the world,” then we’re much likelier to be happy. Each element: learning, growing, and serving, can mostly or totally be in our control. If we defined happiness to include learning and growing, then it’s in our control to learn and grow, and bring happiness closer to ourselves.
If you defined happiness to also include serving the world, then you can serve the world and bring happiness even closer.
So YOU can be in charge of bringing happiness to yourself, and lessening your stress, based on how YOU define happiness.
And guess what? You are the only person in the world who can define happiness for you. No one else can. They can give you ideas, but they cannot think a single thought in YOUR head, let alone deciding what happiness means, and when it comes, for you.
What does happiness mean for you?
Time Travel Rescue 