Are you close? Do you almost have everything in your life lined up the way you want it? Or do you still have a ways to go? And how stressful is it trying to get everything just right?
Guess what? Never going to happen. Control is an illusion. Ultimately, no matter how good you are at manipulating the ingredients of life, unexpected things will happen. Challenges and changes that you could not anticipate, and which you think you do not want, will show up. Little things, big things, and everything in between.
Does this mean that happiness is doomed or fleeting? NO. What it means is that you must choose happiness first, and choose it again no matter what shows up. This choice is your power point in life.
Everyone wants to be happy, but most people have a detailed recipe for the experience of happiness. In other words, we will be happy when we can check off all the required ingredients on our list. Even if by some miracle this happens for you at some point in time, it will not last more than a nano second. In the blink of an eye someone will be rude to you, or something will disappoint you, or you will experience loss, or you won't get what you want, or a crisis will appear. Poof, your happiness is gone.
The path to lasting happiness, happiness as a way of life, is to toss out the recipe. Choose to be happy, and choose it again no matter what shows up. No requirements, no conditions. Let nothing change your decision to be happy. This is not a matter of putting on blinders. Rather, it is an acknowledgment that choosing happiness is the one thing in life that is always under your control. In the midst of life's greatest challenges, in times of heart breaking grief, happiness is still yours for the choosing.
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