
- Image by david_a_lea via Flickr
Have you heard the saying. “happiness is a journey not a destination?” Or, perhaps, you’ve heard, “there is no WAY to happiness, happiness is the WAY.” Over my professional career I’ve read many books and been to many motivational seminars that talked about happiness. Most of them claim that happiness is a choice. If we’re feeling down, frustrated, lost, depressed, etc. etc. then it’s because we haven’t made the choice to just be happy.
Well, I hate to break it to ya my fellow Midlifers but that’s a bunch of sh$t. Yes, you heard me. My experience with that particular philosophy is that it leads to a good amount of dissatisfaction and even more frustration. Sometimes we are simply down, sad, and depressed and trying to make a choice to be happy is next to impossible. However, here’s what is possible. It’s possible to make a decision to ALLOW happiness into your life. I know it might sound like a play on words but it’s true.
I was just talking with a good friend of mine that I’ve known since high school. He’s just turned 40 and has had a similar year as mine. He’s recently divorced, trying to rebuild his career, and work through a number of other challenges all at once. Over the last year there was a good stretch of time where he found himself nightly at the neighborhood bar. It was beginning to become a problem for him. He was depressed, putting on lots of weight, and generally engaging in toxic relationships. Basically, he was unhappy in a deep way.
It’s very early in his recovery but he said that he just decided that happiness wasn’t much different than sinking into a good yoga pose.”You just have to let it happen.” You can’t force your body into strange positions but you can ALLOW your body to settle into the position on it’s own.
This has been my experience as well. I’ve seen the results in allowing happiness. When I allow happiness to just move into my life I find that I end up in situations, or relationships, or work settings, where happiness just comes easier.
Being happy isn’t just as simple as deciding one minute to be happy. It’s about letting it enter your life. You see if I take the well known statement, “there is no WAY to happiness, happiness is the WAY” then that implies that I have to either already be happy or pretend to be happy in order to find more happiness. Does that make sense? However, if I tweak that statement a little to say, “there is no WAY to happiness but ALLOWING happiness is the way” then it’s much more empowering.
For me letting myself be happy means I tend to find myself in positive relationships and situations where I am happy.
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