A lot of the times if you ask someone what they want to be when they are older. They often times respond with: “I want to be happy. All I want to be is happy”. I am telling you today, that being happy is not something you push off for a later date. You can’t put happiness on a deferred payment plan. Being happy is not something where if you finally get that car, you’ll be happy. Or if you finally buy the house of your dreams, you’ll be happy. Or if you find love, you’ll be happy. Although these things do make you happy, but it can only bring you temporary happiness. Once the novelty wears off, the happiness goes away. It’s like when you save all your money to finally buy those shoes you always wanted. Then when you first get those shoes you are so happy then after a couple weeks, the novelty wears off and then your happiness wears off. Then you have to buy something else to get that same happiness again. This makes you fall into a cycle of chasing happiness. Happiness can’t be pursued.
Can You Achieve Happiness?
No, happiness is not like a college degree or a award that can be achieved. Happiness is like a birth certificate where you are born with it. You just have to find where it’s at in your house. You are already born happy. Look at a baby or a young kid, they are always happy. The simplest things make them happy. Just one action figure toy can make a little kid so happy. Little kids aren’t taught how to be happy, they just are happy. I believe this is because of two things. One because of gratitude, and two because of being present.
Gratitude is key to finding happiness. Gratitude changed my life. Before practicing gratitude, it was hard for me to truly be happy. I took too much for granted. I appreciated nothing. Once I started practicing gratitude every morning, that was when something switch inside me. I started to remind myself everyday of the things I have in my life. By just recalling 3 things you are grateful each day, you actually rewire your brain for the better. There is a term called neuroplasticity, it basically means your brain is essentially “plastic” where it can be molded and create new connections between neurons due to changes of behavior, new responses to situations, and new environment. That is why it’s good to travel and drive routes you haven’t drove before. It creates new pathways in the brain. So just by recalling a minimum of 3 things you are grateful everyday, you rewire and mold your brain for the better.
How Do I Find Happiness When I Constantly Suffer?
It’s very simple, when you are suffering, try to find the meaning in the suffering. For an example, many years ago, I suffered so much from relationships, to physical and mental pain but these things cease to cause me pain and suffering when I found the meaning in the suffering. You don’t suffer because you committed a sin or did something wrong and the universe is trying to get you back. You suffer because it’s trying to teach you something. If you don’t learn this simple concept, you will always suffer until the day you die. Once you find the meaning in all your pain, you will no longer suffer and you will find happiness and your purpose. My suffering lead me to my life purpose.
How Do I Feel Happy When Everyone & Everything Around Me Makes Me Feel Sad?
To answer this question, lets talk about a book called Man’s Search For Meaning By Viktor Frankl. He was in a holocaust concentration camp. Where he seen his kids and wife die, while he was tortured. Luckily he survived. He learned a powerful lesson from the concentration camp. Between Stimuli & Response, is the freedom to choose how you respond. So no one can make you sad but yourself. This concept will change your life. Through most of my life, I always thought that the outside world governs my inner feelings. Just in the recent years, I realized that I was wrong all along. I am the only person responsible for how I feel internally. People and situations can provoke my feelings but the outside world is never the reason you feel a certain away. Just like Viktor in the concentration camp, they can torture him all they want but at the end of the day, he is the only one responsible for how he feels. No one can make you depressed but yourself. No one can make you angry but yourself. No one can make you jealous but yourself. NO ONE CAN MAKE YOU HAPPY BUT YOURSELF.
I often times hear people say things like: “When I get that car, I’ll be happy. When I get that house, I’ll be happy. When I find my soulmate, I’ll be happy. When I get that job, I’ll be happy. When I achieve success, I’ll be happy.”
I got bad news for you. These things will not bring you happiness. They will only bring you temporary happiness. Once the novelty wears off, the happiness goes away. A lot of people feel like they need to find love to be happy. You should never depend on someone else for your happiness. Why do you think people jump from one relationship to another? The reason is because they depend on someone else for their happiness, so they need to be in a relationship at all times. I found myself doing this in my teenage years. From middle school through high school, I was never single, I was always in a relationship. It wasn’t until I spent a month in the hospital because I had a major surgery done on me, that I realized I depended on women for my happiness. When I was forced to be alone without a woman in the hospital, was when I realized, if I am going to be happy, it’s up to me. I had many toxic relationships because I couldn’t grasp this concept.
So if you are going into a relationship or looking for a relationship because you are alone and sad and you want to be happy, then you are entering a relationship for the wrong reasons and you are going to either end up back where you started or stuck in a toxic relationship. So before you enter a relationship, learn to be happy with yourself first. Don’t look to a relationship to make you happy. Solitude is a powerful thing.
Also if you are looking for completion to feel happy then you have wrongly mistaken. This is what society is stuck in. An example of this is it starts with young kids. All they want to do is go to high school, then what happens when they get there? They realize that it sucks and they want to go to college and live on their own and be with their friends. Then when they get to college, they realize this sucks also, now all they want to do is graduate and get their degree, so they can join the rat race and get an adult job. Then when they get their adult job, they realize this isn’t what they thought it’s going to be. So they say to themselves I’ll just stick this out for 40 years so I can retire at the beach with pina coladas. Or take me for an example, I am writing this blog, doing YouTube videos, writing a book, so I can one day be a millionaire and retire on the beach. Were doing all this hoping for to finally get to the finish line and that is where the real fun will begin. This is a broken mindset, and it will lead you down a road of never ending sadness. We need to STOP living this moment in preparation for the one-day finish line mindset. You need to start living here and now, this moment right now. It’s always easy to be in college or at your job like: “We had it so good in high school why didn’t we enjoy it more? We had it so good in college why didn’t we enjoy college more?” If you went to college, college is some of the best times of your life but you are so worried about what is going to be happen next, that’s why people never truly enjoy it because of the anxiety of the future. The constant striving and hitting the gas pedal is what is taking your happiness and joy away from your life.
This next part may be contradicting from what I just said but it will all make sense.
SIMPLE FACT: People who have goals and a purpose are the ones who are the happiest.
A lot of people struggle with happiness because they have no goal in life. They don’t have a purpose. Now I don’t mean you have no purpose to be alive, what I mean by this is you are not doing what you are supposed to be doing. People are working jobs they hate all day long with no goals, just waiting til payday. And then you wonder why you aren’t happy right now. You aren’t pursuing your life’s purpose, you just being reactive with your life, being robotic, waiting for life to happen to you. Trust me, if you are going to be happy you must have a life purpose. We all need to have a WHY. Why we go to work, why we wake up, why we do what we do. The why will push you in the right direction.
I don’t know what my life purpose is. How do I find it?
All you have to do is answer this one simple question….
If you had all the money in the world right now, what would you be doing? The answer is your life purpose. What things do you do when you forget to eat. That is your purpose. When people are at a job they don’t enjoy, do you think they forget to eat? No way! That’s all they are thinking about. All they are thinking about is what they are going to eat on their lunch break.
So find your life’s purpose, and you will find your happiness.
If you can’t be happy right now then you will never be happy with what you get in the future. THE TIME TO BE HAPPY IS NOW
Pro Tip: SMILE OFTEN
Wolf Wisdom Empire 