What if you didn’t have to work another day in your life, would that make you happy?
Or, what if you inherited a mansion?
Do you think any of these things would make you any happier?
I think the obvious answer is… “Yes!”
…Of course I’m only kidding; these things would not make you any happier…
My brother came to visit me a few weeks ago, and he was looking around my house and he said, “Were you all as happy as you are now, before you lived here?” I think he knew the answer, but he just wanted to double-check.
I said, “Our happiness has not changed, we are as happy here as we were when we lived in our one bedroom apartment.”
And I don’t say “our happiness hasn’t changed” to be clichéd; the reality is that we were “really happy” then, and we’re “really happy” now. Where we live has absolutely no bearing on our happiness. If we moved into a one-bedroom apartment tomorrow, or even if we were forced to live on the streets, we would not sink into a deep, dark depression; our happiness would remain the same.
[Of course our internal drive would be different. We’ve lived at a certain standard for so long that we would feel the need to recreate that standard, (and we would recreate the standard,) but that has nothing to do with our happiness.]
Money does not change you for better or worse; it only magnifies who you are. If you’re a moron, then money will only make you a bigger moron. If you’re a giver, then money will only make you a bigger giver.
Your happiness is not based on what you have; your happiness is simply based on your decision to be happy. It’s based on a mentality or a perspective that says, “There’s always something to be happy about, no matter what’s going on around me.”
Don’t attempt to base your happiness on your circumstances because circumstances are ever-changing. If you are to be consistently happy, you cannot rely on the consistency of things that are inconsistent.
Circumstances change, things go wrong, but the reality is, this does not affect your happiness, even if you think it does.
Happiness is an internal reflection, not an external reflection….and this is where it gets deep.
…Because the internal reflection that you have is literally creating your external world.
But if you don’t know this, you’ll walk around complaining about your circumstances, thinking they’re the reason you’re unhappy. You’ll go around perpetuating the problem with your mouth while ignoring the real issue which is the way you’re thinking.
If I look at the people in my life who complain the most, the people who are the most “unhappy,” they seem to have the most things in their life to be unhappy about. They have a job (that they chose), that they’re unhappy with, they have a spouse (that they chose), that they’re unhappy with. They go on vacations (that they choose), and don’t have a great time. [How do you not have an amazing time on vacation?]
The people who I know who are the happiest have the greatest things to be happy about. They have wonderful kids, they go on amazing vacations, they have the best spouses, and they love their work.
The unlearned may say the happier people have more things to be happy about. But a careful study would show the truth.
The truth is that the happier people’s thoughts are fixated on happier things, and their thoughts are creating a happier life. Not only to the point where they just think there life is better, but their perception is actually causing them to make decisions which lead to better outcomes.
In life you get what you accept and what you expect. Happy people expect to be happy, and so they’re constantly looking for and experiencing opportunities which confirm this inner belief.
Unhappy people subconsciously expect to be unhappy, and so they create opportunities for unhappiness. They complain about their spouse, instead of pointing out the positives, and so their marriage gets even worse. They’ll even go to the theater and despise every movie they see, instead of just enjoying the simple moments. They choose to be unhappy, they choose to ponder on unhappy thoughts, and so they are forced to eat from the fruit of their own ways.
Their thoughts have created their life. If they won a million dollars, they would complain about paying the taxes on it, they would complain that a million dollars is really not as much money as they thought it was, they would complain, and complain, and complain, until they perpetuated their cycle of unhappiness.
The first step to being happy is to stop complaining! Stop destroying your destiny with your words. Your words are like the bit in a horse’s mouth, they point the direction of where you’re going. This is why you should never, ever complain.
I often get e-mails from people, and the e-mail will start out with, this is going wrong, and that is going wrong, and on top of that, this too is also going wrong, and things have been going wrong for years, and I’m depressed.
Well of course you are depressed, look at what you’re focusing on! You start your e-mail to me with a laundry list of what’s wrong. This is what’s coming out of your mouth; this is the direction that you are pointing your life in.
The truth is there is always something to be happy about, there is always a reason to be grateful, you have to find that reason and stop looking for an occasion to be offended; because if you look for a reason to be offended you will find one.
If you look for problems, you’ll find them.
Stop looking for problems! Look for a reason to be happy; search, even if you have to search long and hard. There’s always something to be happy for. You can be happy that you’re among the living; everybody didn’t wake up this morning, you can be happy that you can read and comprehend these words.
Look for reasons to be happy, because they’re out there, quit judging your situation as bad. The reality is, your situation is not bad, your perception is bad, the perspective that you’ve decided to take is bad, and that’s it.
I heard somebody say, “If you put everybody problems in a pile, and you had to pick a set of problems, you would pick out your own.” That’s probably true, because it’s not your problems that are the problem; it’s you who’s the problem. It’s you who needs to change!
If you had a better spouse, would you know how to treat them; the requirements for a “Level 10” spouse are not the same as the requirements for a “Level 3” spouse. Your spouse is not the problem, there are people experiencing worse, who aren’t depressed, but they’ve made a decision to focus on the positive, and so should you.
When you decide to focus on the positive and to only speak words that are uplifting, not only will you change on the inside, but that change on the inside will overflow and change your outside. You will begin to see how you can improve your marriage, and how you can find that dream job.
…and the “other problem” that you were having, you’ll see that it’s really not as bad as you thought it was. Wayne Dyer says, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change,” and this is really true, …it all lies in your perspective.
Remember you are in control of your happiness; you are in control of your destiny! So change your perspective today, and you will change your life forever!
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