This week, I have a challenge for you… I challenge you to make a choice that will change the rest of your life. And that choice, is to be happy.
Hold on, you might say. How can I guarantee that I will remain happy from this day forward? Well, there’s really not much we can control in this life, but the one thing we do have control over, is how we feel about our life. For that is a choice. A choice we get to make every moment of every single day.
And in this week’s episode on I Love Me The Podcast, we’re diving into what happiness really is, what stops us from experiencing it, how to let go of the conditioning that keeps happiness at arm’s length, and how choosing happiness — unconditionally — becomes one of the most powerful spiritual practices you’ll ever adopt.
Simple, inspiring lessons in self-love. Hello happy pants, it’s Tamra here.
Learning how to be happy with our life is at the very heart of spiritual living.
But to live in this way, we have to approach life differently.
For example, the happiest people aren’t the people who have the most…
They’re the people who have the least preferences.
The fewest conditions on how life needs to unfold in order for them to feel okay.
Let me repeat that:
The happiest people, are those who have the least preferences on how they wish life to be.
Because while we can make many choices — what to eat for dinner, the career path we take, who we marry, whether we choose to have children — we can’t control the outcomes of those choices.
We can’t know if that career will fulfil us or lead us to the prospects we had in mind.
We can’t know if that person we marry will stay with us, and be loyal.
We can’t know if we do choose to have children, if that will eventuate and if it does, what those children will present to us.
All of that is unknown.
What we can control though, is how we feel about the way our life unfolds.
So let me ask you:
Do you want to be happy, or do you not want to be happy?
Because that is a choice you get to make, regardless of what’s going on in your world.
Where people often trip up, is that they say they’ll be happy if they get that promotion, or if they marry the perfect guy, or if they overcome some personal challenge, maybe recover from some serious illness.
Then they’ll be happy.
But that’s not choosing happiness.
That’s postponing happiness.
So the question remains…
Do you want to be happy?
Do you want to life a happy life?
And if you do, then you can choose to be so.
But, how can I be happy if I’m struggling with this health issue, or if my cat just died?
I’m not saying don’t allow yourself to feel your emotions.
Absolutely, feel what you need to feel in the present moment,
And if you need support in doing that, I have a whole episode that guides you on how to process your emotions, so you can move through them.
It’s Episode 14: Feelings. Fall In Love With Feeling Yourself.
But once the emotion is felt — once it’s moved through your body — the choice is still yours.
Do I choose happiness, or do I choose suffering?
Because…
The only thing standing between you and happiness is your attachment to life being different to how it is.
If you’re not feeling deeply happy right now, it’s because your attention is focused on what you believe is wrong.
From childhood we were conditioned to believe we need things — achievements, approval, success, love, perfect circumstances — in order to be happy.
But happiness is not a reward.
It’s not a finish line.
And it’s definitely not something you need to ‘work toward’.
Happiness is your natural state — the one that gets buried beneath the layers of conditioning, fears, beliefs, and old emotional residue you’ve picked up through life.
The only way happiness becomes real and lasting is if we stop making it conditional.
When we learn to do this…
To release our attachments to how we need life to go…
Then life becomes a journey.
A journey where yes, things happen.
But we simply flow with what happens and allow those events and circumstances to grow us into a more authentic version of ourselves.
That’s the beauty of life.
Everything is always happening for us.
Not to make us miserable.
Not to disappoint us.
But to open us to the depths of our being, so we can move through life in a less attached, less challenging, and less disturbing way.
This brings us back to attachments.
As soon as we become attached to a certain outcome, or a person behaving a certain way, or life moving in a certain direction… we instantly limit our freedom.
We limit our ability to feel good.
We limit our happiness.
But when we release attachment — when we let life be life..
We return to joy.
We return to ease.
We return to ourselves.
And yes… as soon as you commit to being happy, life will test you.
Something will go wrong.
Someone will disappoint you.
Unexpected costs will come up.
Challenges will arise.
Not because life is punishing you —
But because life is showing you exactly where your attachments still live.
In this way…
Life is our greatest spiritual teacher.
Always guiding us into our most authentic, open-hearted self.
And every time something triggers you, you’re shown the next place you’re invited to grow.
At that moment, you have two choices:
- Fall back into the old pattern of suffering, or…
- Look at what the moment is revealing — the attachment underneath — and release it.
And if you find yourself being easily triggered by people, have a listen to Episode 7: Use Your Relationships To Grow Your Self-Love.
There is an abundance of wisdom in that one.
When everything’s going well, it’s easy to be happy.
But when things start to go differently to how you’d like them to go, well… that can make being happy more difficult.
This is where we need to realise…
The problem is not in what happened, but the fact that you had very strong preferences on what you felt needed to happen.
So maybe the question we really need to ask then is:
Do you want to be happy regardless of what happens in your life?
As soon as you commit whole-heartedly to being happy, and continue to make that choice each moment of each day, to be happy, then you become enlightened.
This is where…
Unconditional happiness is the highest spiritual practice we can have.
To love and accept ourselves and our lives, just the way they are, just the way they unfold…
That is where the magic of life truely is.
Because if we look at the true purpose of life…
Our life is here to offer us a platform upon which to grow.
To learn from our experiences.
Life, in this way, is our greatest spiritual teacher.
Constantly throwing things our way to test us, to stretch us, to grow us into our most authentic self.
As long as we understand this, we don’t need to take life so seriously, or personally.
Life is not trying to hurt us, or disappoint us.
It wants us to grow and expand to the point that we don’t need anything to feel a certain way.
We don’t need anything to feel happy.
As soon as we really get this…. then we can start practising living with more joy.
More happiness.
More contentment.
Each time, something makes us feel less than ideal, we realise we’re being shown where we’re “attached” to something.
As soon as we can identify where we’re attached to something, then we can do the inner work to release that attachment.
This is the real work of happiness.
Not chasing it, but clearing the inner blocks that keep you from experiencing the happiness that already exists within you.
So we can return to feeling good again.
Then maybe later that day, or the next week, again, something will happen — maybe the car will break down — at the time of creating this podcast, I had the car breaking down multiple times and costing more than I would have preferred.
I was being put to the test.
Can you stay happy, regardless of this.
Because in staying undisturbed by what could be seen as an ‘expensive inconvenience’ I was choosing love over fear.
I was choosing to be happy.
Choosing to walk the spiritual path of being unaffected by life.
We get all sorts of things thrown at us.
We get in a doozy of a fight with our partner, or someone will be really rude to us….
If we’re faced with a major injustice…
Again, we get to see where we’re attached.
And as soon as this attachment is revealed to us, we have two options.
Feel bad about it, OR look at what it’s trying to show us…
That we’re attached to something.
Clear out the attachment, then you free yourself to live in a happy, contented state.
And if you’re not sure how to clear your attachments, I go into depth with guided techniques inside my Remarkable Relationships program.
There’s a whole module on unattaching.
Otherwise, use the tools you have.
Meditate or journal on it.
Use affirmations or mantras.
I have whole episodes sharing how to journal, how to meditate, how to use mantras in a really effective way.
Ep.20 Journaling. The Cheapest Therapy Around.
Ep.41 Chasing Cars Around Your Head? Let’s Meditate.
Ep.77 The Magic Of Mantras – How Words Transform Your Life.
If the attachment is deep rooted and you can’t shift it, work with a therapist like myself, who knows how to help you shift it.
Do whatever you need to do, so you can be free to enjoy your life.
Because we are here to have a great life.
Whether we do or not, that comes down to whether we’re willing to commit to a happier, more easeful path.
A more self-loving path.
So, if we’re not here to suffer, why suffer?
Why suffer when there is a different way.
A more expansive way to move through life, even when things happen that may not line up with our initial wants and ideas.
Because like I keep saying:
Happiness truly is a moment-by-moment choice.
Events don’t decide your happiness — you do.
There will always be something that could bother you.
The question is:
Do you let it?
And yes — feel your feelings.
Always.
What you don’t feel gets stored in the body, and stored emotions eventually create tension, illness, and disconnection.
If someone close to you dies, yes, feel the sadness.
I have a whole episode on how to work through Sadness, it’s episode 47: Grief, Love And Letting Go: The Hidden Wisdom Of Sadness.
But after the feeling is processed, the choice remains:
Do I hold onto this…
Or do I return to happiness?
Life is not a dress rehearsal.
This is it, right now.
So choose unconditional happiness.
And make it a daily practice.
For choosing to be happy, is a practice.
A spiritual practice that will guide you home.
To your most authentic self.
If you practice being happy, doing the inner work to release the attachments that would keep you from being happy, then you’ll feel your heart start to open.
To expand.
Your love for yourself and those around you will amplify.
And as this happens you’ll naturally start to attract in more positive experiences, more healthy relationships, because happiness is a vibration.
Just as suffering is a vibration.
And we are like magnets, in that we attract in more of what we are.
This is another topic we I talk about this in depth in Episode 22: When Manifesting Becomes A Way Of Life.
So…
My challenge to you this week is this:
Choose to be happy.
Then choose again, when you get challenged.
And keep choosing!
Again and again and again.
Make it your mission to stay happy no matter what.
To live a happy life.
But when I say that, yes, feel the feeling that might get triggered, don’t suppress emotions.
For what we don’t allow ourself to feel, we store in the body.
And like I’ve said, stored, unresolved emotions in the body, create tension and illness.
So yes, when we’re challenged, feel the emotion, absolutely.
Work through the attachment that caused you to feel that way.
Release it
Let it go.
And then choose to continue on, happy.
Our true nature is to be happy.
To live a happy life.
It’s all the conditioning and trauma we accumulate that blocks it.
And every moment offers us the opportunity to come home to ourselves again.
So choose happiness.
Let it be your way of life.
Let it be your spiritual practice.
And choose it again, and again, and again.
Because when happiness is your priority, your whole life transforms.
If you loved this episode on how to live a happy life, please share it with a friend.
Give it a rating or a short review.
And next episode?
We’ll go deeper into learning about ‘attachments’.