Happiness is not a situation. Nothing has to START happening in order for you to be happy. Nothing has to STOP happening in order for you to be happy.

Happiness does not necessarily occur (or if it does, it is temporary) after you have worked hard to achieve a goal. Even if you expend massive amounts of blood, sweat and tears. After six months, your shiny new BMW becomes “just another car you own”. You McMansion house eventually becomes just “your house”. We adapt to our environments.   

Happiness has little to do with what happens to you. So if you are:

• raped
• homeless
• poor
• rich
• from a large family
• stricken with cancer
• have AIDS
• are gay
• middle class
• unmarried
• religious
• childless

…your happiness is still pretty much under your control.

There is no path to happiness, happiness is the path.

Happiness is both the goal and the means (to achieve happiness).

Of course, just as you have the power to be happy, you have the equal and opposite power to be unhappy. You might decide consciously (or unconsciously) to view your current situation as unhappy. There are two main reasons for this:

1. Low moods
2. Uninvestigated negative beliefs

Low moods happen to everyone at some time. The way to handle them is to lie low. Be calm, serene, and wait for the mood to pass. Decide not to make any decisions for a few hours. Watch TV, play video games, go to your room (don’t head to the kitchen), and just relax; eventually the mood will pass.

Uninvestigated negative beliefs are another reason you make yourself unhappy. The key to this problem is immediate and aggressive investigation your negative belief. You can also write the negative belief down and investigate it later.   

This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 2:04 pm and is filed under Happiness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.