the strength within – Time Travel Rescue

Choose our thoughts

CHOOSE our thoughts. Decide what we think about. Proactively select them, for our experience of life reflects what we think about.

Yet, how often do we choose? Or even know that we can?

So often we lose ourselves in our thoughts. Immersed so deeply we didn’t even realized that they are thoughts – They’re not us.

We’re not even having thoughts at that point; the thoughts are having us.

Be aware of our thoughts. Don’t fight them. Don’t fear them. Or judge them. Just see them, watch them, and stay aware of them.

Eventually, maybe we can even choose them. Think about the thoughts we want to fill our mind with for a life of meaning and growth. Choose what we think about: our loved ones, what we’re put on this Earth to do, and anything that can help us grow.

Choose the light.

Let go of thoughts that don’t serve us. Let them go not just to forgive someone or some past, but also for our own sake:

Let go of resentful thoughts and narratives for our own sake.

Here, letting go is an act of kindness to ourselves. We deserve that and we can give it to ourselves.

We can love ourselves by letting go of resentment toward someone else.

The better we learn at choosing, and the better thoughts we choose, the better our life experiences become.

We can love ourselves.

Manifesting…. YOU

What would you like to manifest?

For what reasons would you like to manifest, it?

Many of us would manifest money, respect, love, children, and power. “Life would be better if only I had _____,” so our mind says. Sure, I would love them too!

Nothing’s wrong with external phenomenon. “Other” people and things. Anything that’s not “me”. They can make us feel good, very good in fact, and sometimes even elated.

But will they truly make us happy? For how long can we put off the search, the yearning, for something or someone “better”?

How about if we just bypass these intermediaries, money, love, and reputation, things that we think will bring happiness, and go straight to the source and directly manifest happiness?

You see, instead of chasing after the people and things that we think will bring happiness, and finding out later that we’re still wanting. Why not just figure out what happiness means to us, what it requires from us, and work from there?

So first, figure out what happiness looks like and means. To you.

Wisely choose how we define it. The lower the threshold the happier we become. The higher the bar the worse we feel.

A wine novice enjoying their box wine feels happier than a wine afficionado complaining about their vintage Bordeaux.

To the novice, any box wine, and perhaps no wine at all, can help induce laughter and other merriment. To the expert, no wine can ever be good enough, if “good enough” requires meeting some unobtainable criteria for perfection.

What we define to be “good enough” determines how good we feel. It’s not just our job, mortgage, or relationships, that determine our life quality. The way we think has so much to do with it, so much more perhaps.

We are responsible for and the generator of our thoughts. That means WE have the power to lower the threshold for achieving happiness, and therefore the power to make ourselves happier.

If we want to be happier more often, and who doesn’t? Then let’s lower the condition for happiness. Be happy when it’s sunny, and be happy when it’s rainy. Be happy when we get a raise, and be happy when we don’t.

Don’t let external circumstances determine when and if we get to feel happy.

Allow ourselves to feel happy.

Let our happiness depend on nothing and no one.

For me, happiness can just be a deep sense of wellbeing. When it’s quiet inside. It doesn’t need to require reliving my first love, college graduation, or any other memorable life events. Or gaining a better home, career, reputation, and love in an imagined future. Actually, when it’s quiet inside, I can enjoy anything. And when I can enjoy anything, I feel happy. Don’t you feel the same way?

If happiness depends on nothing and no one, then what is left?

YOU

So, YOU, and maybe ONLY you, have the power to provide true happiness to yourself.

And who is the “you” to be manifested? That is a question worth considering. In fact, we must answer that for ourselves. Figuring out and answering that question may be one of the reasons for being here in the first place.

Direct attention to your higher self.

We are so much greater than our ego.

What hurts our ego can never harm our soul. Our higher self.

How my feelings can hurt so easily! All the while my soul remained calm, strong, unshaken.

Life would be so much more enjoyable if I lived more from the calmness of myself than the fragility of my ego.

So, I’ll focuse my attention more on my true self, the one with kindness, generosity, love, and compassion.

More so than the part who’s afraid. Afraid of rejection and abandonment. Hurts others to ask for love, to protect myself.

Always seeking love when it’s all within me the whole time.

In fact, love is me. And I am love.

And so are YOU.

Focus your attention on your higher self.

The first step

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?