Tag Archives: happiness

Rejecting happiness by unfocused wanting

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I used to be surprised at how many people really are not happy. Some people generally want more money, more fame, more love, more toys. They find it difficult to be satisfied with their life. Being happy happens between our ears, it is not something external to us.

I had a few hundred words written here about how and why we are not happy, but after I thought what I wrote for a few hours, I erased what I had written. What I had written was deceitful in some ways. Instead know that happiness is a choice almost without exception. We all want to be happy but we do not know what we really want to be happy. I believe what I have rewritten below will help most people find real happiness in their life.

If you want to be happy you have to work for it. Happiness is free, and easy to acquire, but you have to want happiness and want to pursue it. If you want to be happy, and you are not willing to work on being happy, nothing will change for you.

If you ever listened to, or remember a child’s on the spot bedtime prayer, you know how most of us pursue happiness. A child’s impromptu prayer goes something along the lines of, ‘….Mommy and Daddy, Sister Jean, Cousin Timmy, and our dog Spot. Oh, don’t forget my teacher, Aunt Erma, the ice cream man, and my best friend Pete. While you are listening, I need help with my school work tomorrow, and I do not know why I have to learn math….’

What can be expected from a mishmash of unfocused wants is about what arrives. The universe conspires to fulfill each of those requests to the best of its ability. The child’s prayer is a good example. What the child is saying is: “Take care of everyone important to me, I don’t want to learn math, and I did not do my homework.” The next day, the child does not learn anything about math, and the homework was never finished.

It is the same thing with wants in our life. We want an interesting job, we want to be able to make more money, we want to travel across the country. What we have is not enough, yet we are not sure what it is we do want. Many of us spend our life in this want, don’t want state.

And we wonder why we can not find happiness in our lives. What we really want in our lives are simple things. When those simple things show up, they are not good enough for us, and we reject them. Though if we slowed down and appreciated what the universe has done for us, we would find we have all we could ever want and need.

What you want in your life should be focused, if not, be open to many possibilities. If you want to have a lot of money, think about it where it is going to come from. Wanting a lot of money and finding yourself selling off your things for cash fills your want, but not in the way you expect.

Make sure what you want in your life is what you really want, not what someone else has. For example a person may think they want more people in their life, but what they really want are better relationships with the people already in their life.

If you are vague about what you want, be accepting of what shows up to fill your want. Some things you do not expect happen if rejected may reduce your opportunity to be happy. Happiness is not difficult, it is available for all of us. Having a new want list by the end of each and every day, makes it difficult for what you really want to enter into your life.

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Childhood dreams and goals may start your new life

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It sure would be wonderful if you could spend every day doing whatever you really want and really enjoy? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to wake up each day and do something that makes you truly happy? How would you feel knowing that a life such as this is possible for you?
While it sounds like a sales pitch, to me at least, it is true that some people who do not have as much going for them as you or I do, wake up and really enjoy each and every day. What makes it even more impressive is they are nicely rewarded for doing what they love.

What separates you from them? Not much really, life balance and lifestyle, and childhood goals. However if you choose to follow your current career path there is nothing keeping you from success. Of course individual success depends on how you choose to judge success.

Ingrained success criteria is a big limiter in our quest of finding perfect life we wish we had. We want our life to be satisfying and full, although our options seem to be slim indeed. This creates conflict between our wants and our wants. We want to be able to do what we enjoy doing. We also want to become wealthy while we are at it.

What would happen if the success criteria were redefined? What if you could do whatever you always wanted to do, whether that is tending cattle on an open range, or owning your own candy store that specializes in fruit shaped ice cream? What would your criteria for success be then?

It is in the little things in life we get mired up in. As children when we are asked what we want to be when we grow up, we learn quickly what we declare is not usually the response the asker is looking for. We allow ourselves be talked into a group think measure of success, instead of allowing ourself to pursue our real dreams, and define success in ways that are meaningful to us.

We start modifying our answers when asked what we want to be. Instead of wanting to be a clown, or the world’s best cat herder, we now utter we want to be a banker, lawyer, or perhaps doctor. We enjoy those temporary feelings of being approved of by adults. We start forgetting other personal, conceptions of what we really want to do with our life.

This is a multi generational problem. It was an show stopper for our parents who mainly settled for mediocre adult lives, for us as kids, and now as adults. Unless the buck stops with us, lost childhood aspirations will be a part of your children’s life too. Most of us had our childhood goals trampled, and we have almost forgotten them. Children are quick to observe and mimic whatever response really brings approval from you. Are you now willing to continue the cycle of trampling the futures of those who follow by stifling their real life goals?

It is not too late for any of us to start working toward our forgotten goals, to know the intrinsic happiness we never found. Intrinsic happiness is happiness that flows outward from within, not forced emotions of others which let us feel good for a few moments only. There are very few success stories that do not have bold and profound feelings of doing what really makes us happy. Make time to remember the goals you used to have. Start looking for ways to bring those long suppressed goals into your life. Use idle time to nurture your newly rediscovered childhood life goals.

Give them water, sunlight, and a proper venue to grow and flourish. Once you begin to live your real life goals, adapt them into your life. While riches and immense wealth may never happen, you will discover some things are not as important any longer as they once were, as you have found something more rewarding….

Other posts of possible interest:

Failure is a good option

Take charge of your life

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Be true to yourself to be happy with yourself

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One of the keys to being happy is to be truthful with yourself. If you can not be truthful with yourself, how can you expect to be happy? Being truthful with yourself is hard at first, yet anyone can do it, and everyone can find themselves happier with their life by learning to be truthful with themselves.

If you think you are truthful with yourself, try a little experiment. Think about something that someone has mentioned to you about you that you know is a an area in your life that could use some type of change.

When someone mentioned this to you, how did it make you feel? If it makes you feel angry, it is likely something in your life you are ignoring. If you are ignoring this, and you were aware of it before it was mentioned to you, you are not being honest with yourself. If you are not honest with yourself, how can you expect to be deep down happy?

It is not easy being honest with yourself. It takes courage and it takes some amount of work at times. A simple example is someone who you feel drinks too much, or gambles too much. What you observe about them, and what they perceive about themselves are usually very different.

For most of us, being happy, is nothing so dramatic as admitting we have an addiction or other problem. It is generally more subtle, because we do not make the connection between one action and another consequence.

For example my really losing weight instead of pretending to. I found out a lot about my thinking about food and eating habits when I seriously decided I wanted to lose weight. Up until that moment I knew I should lose weight, but never followed through. I would have these thoughts as I was at a buffet having a second desert after a second helping. It was easy to justify my actions telling myself I would eat less over the next few days to make up for this meal where I ate too much.

In this situation it was impossible to be happy with myself, and the contradiction I placed myself in. Yet for many years it was the norm for me. It was not until I came to terms with what I was doing, that I found happiness in this area of my life.

Another example from my life is my post, Dark Night of the Soul. I lived for decades being miserable because I refused to accept what I was and who I am because it did not fit into my definition of what I thought I should be. More to the point, I let my ego run my life, and I followed along in the distance. Of course if we let our ego decide who and what we are it will never match reality. Having our own idea of who and what we are is a side effect of ego.

Of course these are major life events, they are also good examples of how we let ourselves get in the way of our being happy. Happiness is not a switch we turn on and turn off, at least for most of us. Many of us have to struggle. Going to a lake and watching people is a good example of how we get in the way of our own happiness.

A good written picture I read recently to clarify my thoughts: There are two groups of people present, those people standing or sitting along the shore and those in people on the water in boats. Due to our nature, the people on the shore are thinking about how nice it would be to be in a boat floating or moving slowly along the on the lake. The people in the boats think about how nice it would be to be on shore, be able to stand up and stretch, or even lay down on a blanket and take a nap.

When we spend our time living our lives in one of these two groups, no matter what our personal situation, it is a real limiter to our being happy. Be aware and do not let yourself get caught up in what you are not, or can not do or be, your personal happiness is at stake.

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When our day is done, and our race is run

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Some nights like tonight, when things are quiet, and the music is just right, I can feel my end approaching. I know it will be tomorrow when my world will be changed forever, and everything I know will be taken away. Strangers will be my family, and if I have any mind left, I will live in a world where none can enter.

A world of memories returning. Thinking thoughts I haven’t thought in decades. Old friends and family members I have all but forgotten will become my closest companions. If my body is wasting away in a corner, or perhaps a bed, waiting for me end, my memories will help comfort me.

If I am very lucky, I will go to bed one night, lay down, turn out the light, think about those most important to me and how much they mean to me, how perfect the world is, and go to sleep. Never to waken again. Someone will find what is left of me, and go through the motions that we go through at times such as those, but my race will have been run.

I can not be sad about it, I have spent my life knowing death waits with me, marking time behind me, over my left shoulder. I am grateful for this knowledge. Death has been my councilor and guide for many years, and there is nothing to fear in death for me. Whenever I question what I should be doing, all I have to do is look over my shoulder, and I see that little swish, the flash of what is visible changing into what is not.

I make my best decisions at that moment. Decisions are easy to make in that instant, because everything I have done up until that moment is weighed, and my path is laid out before me. I can move forward confident that the path I take is the correct path. Consulting death brings me calm, knowing what is important and what is not.

Life is what is important. Making decisions that benefit others without impairing or causing harm to myself is important. My life is my most important possession. Something I do not own, and have so little control over is the most important thing in the world to me. Without my life, I can not do those things I must do. I am not even a spec of dust in a sunbeam.

So when the music, darkness, and my thoughts are aligned, I can feel death behind me, marking time. I know my time is not this instant. I also know that I can not waste what little time I have. Time is too precious, and there is too much to do.

When you look at me, and it looks like I am doing nothing, wasting my time, remember that wasting time is not something I do. I may be resting, or collecting my thoughts. I may even be consulting my final end, to determine how whatever weighs me down at the moment ranks in importance to my final end.

Even if I am lounging about, taking naps between sips of now cold tea, know that I have received my guidance from an honest source. Even now as I type this and listen to the music dancing through the air, I know this is exactly what I should be doing. I also know that when I am done with this task my most important tasks of today are almost done.

The dishes did not get washed, the grass and weeds did not get cut, and dinner did not get cooked. But none of that is important when weighed against those things I did that really matter. If tomorrow I do not wake, I will have passed over knowing that I took care of those most important things in my life with all the thought and care and attention to detail that I was capable of. If I do wake up in the morning, it will be a wonderful day, because I will already know those things which are most important and which things do not matter.

Stepping away from myself, these are the things I wish for you too. It is my desire that you too finish each day knowing that if you do not wake in the morning you have completed those things which mattered the most in your life. If you do wake in the morning, I pray you know what matters most, and what is idle distraction at best. Unfortunately, and it makes me sad to write it, but your time too is short. Make the most of each minute, and when it looks like you are wasting time doing nothing, you and I will know the truth of your actions, and how well your time is spent doing what is most important in your life at that exact moment.

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Ten minutes to find happiness in your life

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How many people do you know who are unhappy with their lives? Some days it seems to me that more people are unhappy with their lives than are satisfied, let alone happy with their life. Usually these are people up to their late thirties. They are miserable. They feel locked in, chained down, and find little to be happiness from one day to the next.

I think  it is too bad so many people feel this way. They do not like their looks, what they do for a living, where they live, and what car they drive. They do not like their body, their face, their teeth, their hair. These desperate people spend a lot of money on fast fixes, and instant  gratification products. They buy products for the top of their head to the end of their toes, and they still are miserable.

So what do they do? They repeat the cycle over and over again. Maybe the hair color was not quite the right shade, the toothpaste does not get their teeth white enough. They go to parlors and have their body hair removed. After all that, it still does not help. Many people who have done all this feel just as bad as they did before they started the process.

If you ask them, they won’t admit it, but they feel like fakes. From the moment they wake up in the morning, to the time they go to bed at night they wear a mask covering up the real them. They worry down deep that at any second they might be exposed for what they really are. Every time they meet a stranger the fear wells up. Any stranger might look deep into their eyes and discern their secret.

Gosh, it must be horrible to go through each and every day in a situation like that. Knowing no matter what you do to improve the way you look, your hair color or hair style, or having your teeth re-whitened it you wake up unhappy. I first noticed this behavior in teenage girls when fitting in is more important than feeling good about yourself. As long as young women fit in, the down deep feelings do not matter.

Of course when I observe the men around me, I notice the same type of behavior. Young men growing into middle age, still making sure they fit in. It is rare to find a man who does not talk only about safe preferred topics. Once the top four or five of mens favorite subjects are talked though, the conversation begins to lag. It is the fitting that matters for men too.

Yet every neighborhood is overflowing with people who are unhappy with their lives and themselves. Men and Women living the American dream, and they are not satisfied with their lives.

I do not understand why they remain this way. The way to have a happier life is not some super secret, buried in some dusty old book. The key to a satisfying life is to start living life for yourself, not for other people. It is that simple, live your life for yourself, and the rest will fall in place. The hardest part of starting to be happy with your life is starting.

After so many years of doing the same things, talking about the same subjects, not letting anyone see your weaknesses, or the idea that you have an interest in something other than popular shallow conversation, it is very hard to change. Most people have been living imitation lives for so long, they no longer remember that once upon a time they liked themselves, and they really enjoyed hobbies and interests that others did not.

It is easy to change, take ten minutes today and think about yourself. Think about something you enjoy that you have not done forever. When you wake up tomorrow, take another ten minutes and do it. Being happy can be that simple.

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Don’t sleepwalk your life away!

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There is a rather old song, where a Man in a long term relationship is reading the singles section of a newspaper, and an ad catches his attention. It is an poem ad asking if he enjoys certain other things that are not part of his present life. The Man apparently has been with the same woman for some time now, and the relationship for whatever reason has grown stale. The Man thinks he is ready for a change, and this one singles ad in pretty intriguing to him.

The man answers the poem type ad, with a poem type reply. He suggests at the end of his reply ad that they meet at a favorite hangout of his. Once they are together they can start planning their future, and he can plan on how to get out of his stale, boring relationship he is currently in.

He arrives and takes a seat. Then if memory serves me right, in walks a woman. After one look he knows it is she that placed the ad. The woman who walked through the door is his long term girlfriend! They laugh and seem quite comfortable with the thought that they are both bored in their relationship with each other. Now though, it appears that they both enjoy things that neither of them talked about in all the time they were together. The song ends with them laughing and planning their new improved future together.

The song has a lot in common with most of our lives. We get up to an alarm going off, and do our morning ritual to get ready to leave the house to our work or school. From leaving the house to the end of the day we spend our time mostly on autopilot. One day blends into the next, and the next, until it is the weekend again. Occasionally something interesting happens and we come out of our fog to check it out, but generally we slip back into the fog we call our life. So we have a lot in common with the song when looked at from this perspective.

How different our lives would be if we were not spending them on autopilot? What if we started each day with the intent of seeing everything through a new pair of eyes, or form a new perspective? What if as we went though our morning routine, we actually participated in what is happening to us? The texture and smell of the soap and shampoo in the shower; the crunch or subtle tastes hiding in our breakfast; the sounds and sights on our way to work or school; the fun and pleasure of accomplishing a task that we have not bothered to feel anything about in years?

Actively participating in your own life adds a lot more enjoyment and importance to your life, than simply going through the motions. Even if you think your life is boring, and your job is worse, until you change something to make it better, it is the best life and the least boring job you have at the moment, so take advantage of it. Do not let yourself be lulled into sleepwalking through your life!

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