How your false belief about what will make you happy keeps you from being happy.
Happiness can be yours. You could have it right now, but you don’t want it. Instead, what you want is more stuff.
Why it Matters
By choosing to pursue stuff, you rob yourself of happiness.
Try this Test
Don’t believe me? Then let’s try a little test. What if I told you that you could be happy if you gave up on the one thing you most want? That’s right, to be happy, all you have to do is give up on winning the love of that one special person, getting a promotion at work, or buying a house in the suburbs.
Would you do it?
Would you give it up?
If the answer is no, then you are choosing things instead of happiness.
Why You Stay Unhappy
You suffer because you falsely believe that you can’t be happy until everything and everyone in your life is how you think they should be.
The Ultimate False Belief is that anything, or anyone, needs to be different before you can be happy.
That one false belief leads to most of the suffering in life. You make yourself miserable because the world isn’t how you think it should be.
You believe you can’t be happy without things being how you want them. You convince yourself you can’t be satisfied until you have the right house, clothes, car, job, and spouse.
But here is the thing, if you drop the false belief that you can’t be happy until everything is perfect, then you can be content right now, right where you are. It seems like a radical idea, but happiness is your default condition.
You think you are working to make yourself happy, but you are really working to make yourself miserable. Because every time the world doesn’t bend to your expectation, you decide to be unhappy.
The Ultimate False Belief; is that anything, or anyone, needs to be different before you can be happy.
You Choose to be Unhappy
That’s right; you choose to be unhappy. Your misery is self-generated by the magical belief that making yourself sick will force the world to bend to your desire.
Well, I have a secret for you; the world doesn’t care. And the rest of us are too busy pursuing our own false beliefs about what will make us happy to bother changing to suit you.
Everyone is single-mindedly chasing after their brand of happiness. They all want you to conform to what they think they need to be happy. Sure, they would prefer that you are happy because they believe that will make them more comfortable, but they want you to be pleased with their goals and ideals, not your own.
You are Pursuing the Wrong Thing
What is crazy about this is that everyone is pursuing goals in the hope achieving those goals will make them happy. What no one does is pursue happiness. Thus your satisfaction is always on the other side of your next achievement.
You No Longer Know What Happiness Is
You may be happy for a while when you achieve the goal. More often, what you are is relieved — relieved that the anxiety from pursuing your dream and the fear of failing are temporarily assuaged.
That relief never last long. Soon you realize relief is not the same as happiness. You are no happier despite gaining the girl, house, money, and respect.
Once the realization sinks in, you return to your false belief that you aren’t happy because something in your life needs to change. So you search for a scapegoat to blame for your lack of contentment. Then you set a new goal that you hope will finally make you happy, but it won’t.
You’re Looking in the Wrong Place
Nothing outside of you can keep you happy. No goal can create lasting happiness. Even if the world moved to make everything as you think it must be, you still would not be satisfied for long.
If everything were “perfect,” you still would not be happy because you falsely believe happiness is the product of getting what you want. You would find the flaw in paradise and make yourself miserable until it is “fixed.”
The Only Place to Find Happiness
The only way to be happy is to give up the false belief that anything needs to change. Everything is fine, just the way it is. You can be happy right now where you are.
Right here and now is the only time and place you can be satisfied.
Genuine happiness can only happen here and now. You may remember happiness in the past, but that is a pale shadow compared to feeling joy in the present. And you may be able to imagine joy in the future when all is as you think it needs to be, but that is a dream of happiness, not real happiness.
What To Do
Your false belief that something needs to be different keeps you from being happy here and now. Nothing needs to change for you to be satisfied now. All you need to do is realize that your false belief is holding you back. By choosing to stay with that false belief, you are choosing to suffer.
The moment you see your belief is false, it loses all power over you. Once you see that your recipe for happiness is a lie, you open to the truth that you don’t need anyone or anything to change to be happy.
A Warning
Ok, it’s not that easy. Society keeps telling you you can’t be happy until you have the right person and stuff. That message is so pervasive that it is impossible to ignore. But you can question it; when you do, you will recognize it’s false.
Will this Keep Me from Doing Good
Does being happy here and now prevent you from striving for more and better? The short answer is no. The longer answer is that letting go of the false belief will make you better able to achieve results.
Accepting reality as it is does not mean agreeing with it. Injustice is still injustice, and you can and should work to correct that. The difference is that when you do it without believing you must achieve a specific result to be happy, you can focus on the process. Focusing on the work and not your feelings frees up the energy to get more done.
When you solve a problem to change how you feel, your motivation is to correct your feeling about the issue and not to correct the issue. Right action is motivated to correct an injustice rather than relieve your upset feeling about that wrong.
The Bottom Line
I’ve given you a lot to ponder. The one message you need to take away is that your false belief keeps you from being happy. That false belief is that something or someone in your world must change before you can be happy. When you recognize this belief for the illusion that it is, you will open yourself to being content where you are and with what you already have, and now is the only time and place you can be happy.
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