Eliminate the Limitations You Place on Your Happiness
Many people think that if they were only in some other
place,
or had some other job, they would be happy. Well, that is doubtful.
So get as much happiness out of what you are doing as you can
and
don’t put off being happy until some future date.
If only’s—and woulda, shoulda,
coulda’s. “I
would be happy if only ________.” Take a moment and finish this
sentence. Fill in whatever comes to mind. Whatever it is, it’s a
requirement that restricts you from becoming a happy person. How many times
have you caught yourself saying, “I would be happy if only
I had a good relationship.”
I had a lot more money.”
I had more time.”
I had a better job.”
I had a lot of friends.”
I won the lottery.”
I didn’t have so much responsibility.”
I was more attractive.”
I had gone to college.”
I lost twenty pounds.”
I wasn’t so lonely.”
I wasn’t so depressed.”
I was famous.”
I had no worries.”
I lived somewhere else.”
I was someone else.”
Where are you placing limitations to your own happiness? Formulate
your own “if only—woulda, shoulda, coulda” list. Just
remember, many of the “if only’s” you’ll come up
with are common to all of us. The sad truth is that even when you do lose
the weight, find a good relationship, or make a lot more money, the
happiness doesn’t seem to last. A student of mine, Roger, put it this
way:
The kind of happiness that I have grown to find most
desirable is not the kind that people typically think of what it is to be
happy. While you can find a certain kind of happiness through the enjoyment
of particular pleasures such as getting and spending money, eating good
food, or anything else that feeds our most basic desires, this is not the
kind of long-lasting happiness that will make you most content and most
satisfied with your life. Rather, it’s through dedication and
devotion to common and worthwhile commitments such as volunteering at my
local hospital and being a mentor to young people in my community that I
find the most gratifying form of happiness.
Happiness is temporary when we get what we desire
because too great a value has been placed on it. Then, once our goal is
attained, we begin to crave something else that we feel is missing from our
lives. We do this because our focus is always on the outside rather than
the inside.
When you feel good about yourself, when you develop
your self-confidence to the point where you feel you deserve to be happy,
then you’ll be happy. Make the words “I deserve to be
happy” your
mantra. Repeat these words over and over again, every chance you get. They
help.
So you think winning the lottery will make you happy? It’s really interesting and instructive to take a look
at lottery winners. Indeed, there must be a period of euphoria when a
person wins the lottery. But after the high is over, many winners report
that within a year they’re no happier than they were before. In fact,
lottery winners have a high divorce rate and fewer friends after they win.
Some winners report that within three years they’ve lost all the
money in a financial venture or given it away.
In his book The Pursuit of
Happiness, David Myers cites research
indicating that “ordinary activities [the winners] previously
enjoyed, such as reading or eating a good breakfast, actually became less
pleasurable. Winning the lottery was such an emotional high that, by
comparison, their ordinary pleasures paled.”
Why don’t lottery winners stay happy after
they’ve won? Why do some not even keep the money? After all, they
were able to buy whatever they wanted. On the ABC
News Special “The Mystery of
Happiness: Who Has It . . . How to Get It,” one lottery winner who
was interviewed said, “People have a misconception about having
money. You go out and you go, ‘Oh, that’s what I want,
I’ll buy it.’ Well, a couple of weeks later, . . . that
emptiness comes back. Then what?”
After the lottery winners’ excitement,
disbelief, and elation over winning have subsided, internally they’re
still the same people. With or without the money, unless they feel good
about themselves beforehand, the winnings can’t make them feel like
worthwhile people. To many, it’s a double letdown because they
don’t feel they deserve the money.
Whatever your “woulda, shoulda,
coulda’s” are, remember that happiness comes from the inside.
You deserve good things in your life, whether it be, yes, winning the
lottery, good relationships, or having a career that you love.
You can learn a lot from your “if
only’s” list. Review your list. Are these “if
only’s” really necessary? Do you need to carry them around with
you as extra baggage on your journey? What action can you take and what
solutions can you find to eliminate the limitations you place on your
happiness?
As my Uncle Howard says, “Do you want the
inscription on your gravestone to read ‘Here lies so-and-so. I
shoulda and I coulda’? Or do you want it to read ‘I did
it’?”
|
