Hi everyone, welcome back! Last week I examined how a human mind always makes ‘assumptions’; assumptions about how people want you to behave, assumptions about how your life is, who likes you and who doesn’t, whether you are a good human being or not etc. etc. This week, every time I look around, people seem to be struggling and want to know how to be happy and this is equally true for the ones who are considered to be ‘successful’ by our society. So, I would like to examine why is it that a lot of times even successful people can’t seem to find their way to happiness!
Belief: I thought if I am successful in life, I would automatically be happy. So why am I not?
When we were born into this world, we were so pure, so innocent, and so full of life and happiness. We had big dreams and we thought everything was amazing and nothing was impossible! But gradually over time, as we were growing up, we started to learn from our parents and the society around us. We started to believe in the beliefs of our parents and this society. We started to believe that life was serious business and we had to study very hard and get into great colleges and become successful if we want to be happy in life. So, here we were, just a few years old, but because we didn’t know any better and completely trusted in our parents and this society’s wisdom; we played along like ‘good kids’ when we were pushed to the max for getting the best possible grades. We played along because we wanted to make our parents happy and more importantly we wanted to achieve the most sought after thing that the adults were chasing after – ‘happiness’!! And in the process, we sacrificed fun and instead focused on being hard working; we sacrificed spending time with friends and instead focused on our books and coaching classes; we sacrificed our innocence and instead focused on being a grown up; we sacrificed the happiness and love for life which already existed within us and instead focused on chasing after the ‘external’ happiness that the adults told us was very important!! And so we did all we could possibly do throughout school and college to secure the highest paying job out there. And secure we did – the highest paying job possible. Our parents were so proud and the society treated us like we became better human beings just by virtue of securing this job! Everyone was happy, including us! Everything that we sacrificed in the process seemed worth it at this point! Every time we were pushed by our parents seemed to make sense now because we got the job – our ticket to happiness 🙂
Then we started to work in this job but in working with our ambitious colleagues, the flame of ambition started to burn inside us as well. And this flame of ambition would re-kindle each time one of our colleagues would get promoted and so we decided it was time to join the race for promotions and we started to work very long hours. And we decided to jump on the promotion bandwagon because we thought we will be even happier when we get that promotion and draw an even bigger salary and will be able to buy a bigger home and send our kids to private schools and buy more expensive things that our hearts so very much desire. And in the process of securing that much elusive promotion, we sacrificed enjoying the already beautiful home that we lived in and instead focused on buying a bigger home; we sacrificed spending time with our own kids and teaching them what we know about life and instead focused on getting them into private schools so that they can be taught by great teachers; we sacrificed doing what we loved and instead focused on doing what made us miserable like kissing up to bosses and learning to manipulate; we sacrificed living our amazing life today and instead focused on living a dream in the future!! WOW!!! I don’t think I need to tell you at this point why, even when we become very successful, we still don’t find that damn happiness.
Folks, we have our beliefs about happiness turned upside down because we believe that when we do this or achieve that or when that happens or that doesn’t happen, we will ‘become’ happy. We have set a future date for our happiness because no one taught us about being happy today. Never in our lives are we taught that happiness is a choice and anyone can choose to be happy no matter what they have or don’t have; what they do or don’t do; what they earn or don’t earn; what they own or don’t own. Being rich and successful and owning a lot of things and stuff doesn’t give you the copyright on happiness!! It makes life more comfortable but having a comfortable life doesn’t guarantee you happiness. It only guarantees you comforts!! Happiness is an entirely different ball game!
You know folks, the irony of life is that when we are young kids, we already have that happiness and peace and love and charm inside of us, yet, as we grow up we go looking for all these things in the outside world and spend entire lifetimes just searching and getting frustrated for not being able to find. But if we can just understand that happiness can never come from anything that happens to us or the things that we achieve or don’t achieve, it comes from simply loving who we are today and what we have today. And when we love who we are what we have today, we will not have a lot of attachment with our ideas of what we should have or how much we should earn or what job we should do in order to be successful and happy. We will just go with the flow of life instead of fighting against it because it’s this fighting against everything and everyone which is so depleting and exhausting. And it’s this fighting which doesn’t allow you to feel gratitude for everything and everyone you have today and instead keeps you agitated and angry waiting for the next shoe to drop so that you can validate your belief about happiness which is – happiness comes from outside events and people and things and is very difficult to achieve. Well the truth is that there is nothing to achieve here, there is only to choose and to learn to choose, you need to practice – a lot 🙂
And as always feel free to leave a comment if you feel like leaving one. And until next week, live life, love people 🙂
