I felt inspired to start the new year – the new decade – with a blog about a topic close to all of our hearts: Happiness!
Because if there’s something we all want, it’s to be happy, right?
We’ve just entered the roaring ’20s and the truth is, how you dance your way through the year, will all come down to your relationship with happiness.
And ultimately, you’re relationship with YOU!
So I ask you to simply take a moment now to check in and see how you feel.
Yep, stop reading, just for a moment, and ask yourself honestly:
How am I feeling right now?
How do I feel about my life?
How do I feel about myself?
How happy am I?
Now breathe…..
If you’re feeling anything but 100% happy and at ease and content right now with all that you are and all that you’re experiencing, then please read on, because what I’m about to share, will guide you forward into a happier way of living.
So let’s start at the start, shall we?
Happiness is NOT something you need to work towards.
OK… take another breath, and say it out loud with me:
Happiness is not something I need to work towards. I can be happy right NOW!
That may sound absurd, because you’ve probably been led to believe that happiness is something that you need to get.
And so perhaps you’ve spent your life trying to get happy, through material possessions, through relationships, through food or alcohol, through extravagant gestures, or expensive holidays…
Did it work?
Did it help you find lasting happiness?
Perhaps you were happy for a few minutes, maybe even a day, but did that happy feeling last?
If it didn’t, it’s because happiness doesn’t come from ‘out there’.
Being happy doesn’t come from what we do or what we have or what we achieve in life.
The crazy thing is, most of us have learnt that if we finally meet out soulmate (you can read my take on soulmates in this blog) or if we achieve a certain level of success in any given area of our life, that we’ll feel happy.
So we work really hard to achieve these things.
But what happens if those things we’re working towards don’t happen for another 5, 10 or even 20 years?
Does that mean we need to put happiness on hold?
Does that mean that we have to wait to be happy?
What if this thing never happens?
Then what?
We live an unhappy life?
Most people spend their whole life trying to put all of these things into place – the house, the income, the career, the soulmate, the family, plus a few fancy trimmings – thinking that these things will make them happy.
If they do manage to get all of these things – what they thought would be the perfect life – they’re still lacking one thing: Happiness!
Why?
Because true happiness doesn’t come from a particular circumstance or condition in your life.
The truth is, we make ourself unhappy, by creating conditions around what it takes to be happy.
And these conditions have been programmed into us from a young age.
We learn how to think and act and behave as a child, and it’s this conditioning that makes us feel that we need certain things in order to be happy.
And it’s this conditioning that’s responsible for making us unhappy.
Unhappiness is a sign that we’re believing something that’s not serving us, and as a result, are playing out this belief in our physical life.
Like I said before, happiness is not something you work towards.
People will often say ‘I’ll be happy when …. happens’.
But happiness doesn’t exist in the future.
The only place you’ll find happiness is right here, right now.
You can even test this out for yourself…. right now.
Firstly, see if you can nod your head up and down now.
Go on, give it a go….
Chances are, that was pretty easy.
Now, can you nod your head up and down tomorrow?
Give it a go.
Does it work?
Can you nod your head yesterday?
Is that possible?
If you’ve having difficulty with this, it’s because tomorrow doesn’t exist in the real world.
It only exists in our head.
The ‘now’ is all we have.
Yes, the only time that is real, ever, is NOW.
The past simply exists in our memory, and the future only exists in our imagination.
You cannot be happy in the future unless your happiness is imaginary happiness.
So the only place you can be happy is here and now.
Happiness can only be experienced in the present moment.
As soon as we live in the past, re-living old hurts and pains, we open the door to depression.
As soon as we sprint into the future, we invite in the overwhelm and anxiety.
Neither of these two places is where happiness lives.
Happiness lives in the present moment.
By being present with oneself, we’re able to experience the love within, and thus feel happy, at peace and content.
Therefore, the secret to being happy in the future, is to be happy NOW.
Why?
Because we are creatures of habit.
Practise doesn’t make perfect, practise makes permanent.
The more you do something now, the better you’ll get at it.
If you’re unhappy now, you become an expert at unhappiness, so being happy in the future becomes impossible, because you’re not practised at happiness.
You’re practised at unhappiness.
You’re wired – programmed – to be unhappy.
Something good happens that brings about a brief moment of happiness, and then the mind goes on a mission to find something to make us unhappy again.
That’s why we need to re-wire our brain, so we can have happiness as our natural base state, not unhappiness.
For ultimately happiness is our natural base state, it’s just our conditioning that we took on many years ago, that keeps us unhappy.
Instead of attaching being happy to results, achievements, events and people, base your happiness on just being.
People generally believe that happiness is a bi-product of something else.
Then the problem is, if that something else doesn’t happen, our happiness levels change.
We can live happily right now, if we stop attaching happiness to a thing, person or result.
Happiness must be unconditional.
Yes, you need to let go of the ‘conditions’ that you believe you need to experience, in order to be happy.
And then you need to start practising being happy NOW!
If you’re not truely and deeply happy right now, it is because your attention is on what’s wrong.
We have fixed ideas about what is right and what is wrong, and it’s this attachment to how we think things should be, that creates unhappiness.
What if you shifted your focus to what you felt was right in your life?
What if you stopped judging your life in terms of right and wrong?
What if you dedicated time to practising being happy?
If you keep practising unhappiness, you’ll continue to be unhappy.
If I want to be happy in the future, you need to practice being happy right now.
When it comes to being happy, it really is a case of now or never.
Happiness must be your priority.
For if you don’t make it your priority in life, then happiness will remain on the back-burner.
Something you want, but are not willing to make happen.
When you want happiness as much as you want air, you will be happy.
So instead of investing time in all the things we ‘think’ will make us happy, we invest time in happiness itself.
I hope this blog helps you understand why happiness can seem so elusive.
And to help give you practical tools, and an easy process for feeling happy right now, I’ve created a course called The Way of Self-Love.
It’s designed to help anchor you to the here and now, so you can experience the groundedness of the love within.
For when we connect to our inner well of love, we’re able to experience true happiness.
So if you want to learn how to be happy right NOW, take a peek.
Once you learn these skills, happiness won’t be a fleeting experience, or something that you need to wait for.
Neither will happiness be something you need to work hard for, in the hope of being happy in the future.
Happiness is available to you, as soon as you’re willing to be happy… right NOW!