What makes you happy?

Achieving a goal? A walk in the woods? A swim in the ocean? New shoes? Watching your child play? A vacation? 

There are so many things that can trigger happiness – or misery – which is why I believe social media has become so addictive.  It is morale boosting when your post receives soaring engagement or your texts are loaded with positivity.  But those dopamine bursts can be short-lived not to mention seeking them, exhausting.  What a roller coaster ride!

If you feel, in general, that life is consuming, demanding, tiring, challenging or overwhelming, could it be that the external is in control?  Not enough happy injections?

Consider this: it is natural to want to feel happy but where are we looking?  If we rely on the external, are we only as happy as others make us?

Aha! ~ “Authentic happiness is always independent of external conditions” ~ Epictetus

…. “Freedom is the only worthy goal in life.  It is won by disregarding things that are beyond our control.”

There’s a difference between what makes you happy and being happy.  What makes you happy is a reactionary state.  Being happy is a state of pure consciousness – gratitude – that you are experiencing exactly what you’re meant to as you move in the direction of your intentions.

Abraham Hicks suggests that we are in the “clarity business”.   Only two things are needed to manifest desires: clarity and happiness.

“I get real clear and real happy and good things come to me” says Abraham.  “I get clear and happy then money comes.  And sometimes my clarity says, ‘go over there’, so I do.  And sometimes my clarity says, ‘say this to that guy’ and I do.”  Can you see the surrender?

When you are in that state of consciousness, you are most open to receive guidance of the ideas and steps that continue to move you down the river of continued happiness, expansion and ultimately freedom.

Epictetus says it this way, “Your happiness depends on three things: your will, your ideas concerning the events in which you are involved, and the use you make of the ideas”.  In other words, use your will to decide to be happy, allow the ideas to come to you, then simply act on them. Best advice ever!

The real essence of good is found only within things under your own control.

Sign here for your Captain’s chair.

It’s as we say in A Human Approach:  Serving Humanity by Serving Your Self First.  I elaborate on YouTube but the REAL discussion happens in Human U.  Join us to contribute on your road to Succeed Deliberatley!