I have great news for you. The secret to being happy is simply this: you just have to want to be happy. It’s so simple, but yet so difficult for most to realize. I woke up this morning and told myself, if I want to be happy today, then I just have to want to be happy. How great is that! It’s that easy!
99% of the time when people tell themselves, “I want to be happy! I want to be happy!”, they are really saying, “I want something! I want something! I want something more than I want happiness. I want people to be nice to me at work. I want it to be sunny outside. I want to have an easy day at work. I want the newest shoes or gizmo. I want to have lots of quiet time today. I want a million external material possessions or circumstances to go exactly as I want it to go… or else I won’t be happy. I want everything in the world, except to be happy!”
How upside down our thinking is. Not only are we not asking for happiness, we are setting ourselves up so that it is literally guaranteed our search for happiness is a failure because those external expectations will never be met perfectly. And even if they were, you still wouldn’t be happy because you’d realize that, “hey, I got what I wanted, I thought I was happy for a few minutes, but now I’m still not happy. It must mean that I need more stuff”. And the endless cycle continues, until you realize you were never looking for happiness. You were looking for a whole lot of nothing.
Stop it! Happiness is inside. Where do you feel happiness when you feel it? Inside! Next time you think you are asking to be happy, stop and really think. Are you asking to be happy? Or are you asking for something specific to happen, so that you will be happy? So today when you say, “I want to be happy!”, really mean it. You want to be happy more than you want any external circumstance.
How freeing it is to know that it matters not what happens today. I have no idea what may happen today. Maybe it will be sunny. Maybe things will go great at work. Maybe everyone will be nice and smiling and the drive to work will be easy. Or maybe it will be rainy. Maybe there will be bad traffic. Maybe it will be crazy at work and people will be grouchy and mean. The great thing is it matters not. Not at all. All of those situations are in essence neutral, and you give it the attribute of good or bad, happy or not happy. But they are neutral, not real. They are illusions and have no effects except what you believe they have.
So all you have to want is to be happy, and your intention to be happy will change your perspective, so no matter what happens, it will reflect and be a projection of your happiness. That rain will be the most beautiful and refreshing rain. That traffic will be a time of quiet contemplation. That craziness at work will be a time to appreciate your ability to stay centered and balanced. Your grouchy and mean coworkers will be a golden opportunity to share love and positivity.
It doesn’t mean you have to feel the need to be jubilant in your behavior, that you need to skip into work whistling and grinning and waving like a psycho. The happiness that is real is most often a quiet one, a deep one – a deep sense of joy and peace, that sense of connection, a resonance, energy, a tingling and buzzing feeling inside, a feeling of love. So just be happy. It is truly your choice, so why not?
