How To Be Happy

When people find out that I spend my time writing and speaking to people about happiness, they ask one question.

‘So what is the secret. What does it take to be happy?'

They think there is some secret formula. That if they had enough money… enough love… enough things they would automatically be happy.

The way that they speak of happiness and ask the question indicates that happiness isn’t something they have considered deeply. They haven’t considered it deeply, because they believe that there are so many other things they have to do first before they can be happy.

But because they aren’t happy, life is so much harder than it needs to be. When happiness is your first priority, everything else comes easily. In a car oil smoothes the way for everything else. It protects the engine and ensures that it works without friction that would cause damage.

Happiness works in the same way for our lives. It makes our relationships, our work and everything else in our lives run so much smoother. This helps us to enjoy life more. Feeling relaxed, rather than stressed. In control rather than bounced around by outside forces. And with the space, energy and creativity to do what we want

Just as your car can perform better, accelerate faster, drive more economically and run more smoothly, if you maintain it. So too can your life run more smoothly… if you take the time to make happiness your priority.

This leads us back to the question people ask. What does make us happy?

The answer is that it isn’t things or experiences that make us happy. Happiness is a choice we either make or don’t make. This sentence has many layers to it. Most people take it at the superficial level and can’t understand why they don’t feel happy.

It doesn’t mean that you go about your business, putting yourself in all different kinds of situations where you feel bad, see only ugliness and then choose to be happy. Of course that will not work.

At that level it is like being thrown in the sea with a lead weight and choosing to float. Words are far less important than what you really mean. If 95% of your thoughts and actions are directed to something other than happiness, but you say ‘I choose happiness’. You haven’t really chosen happiness… you have just tried to fool yourself that you have.

For most people happiness is an afterthought. They make the decisions that determine the course their life takes for a hundred other reasons… because it is expected of them… because they want to please other people… and because its what they think they should do.

Then they end up out of their depth… flailing in the river of life. So they start to think I just want to be happy. Somewhere they read that happiness is a choice. And so in their desperation for any life belt, in between making deals with God, they say now I choose happiness.

But it doesn’t work and never will work.

You can have any one thing you want from life… but only one thing at a time. Life is so interconnected and interwoven that different choices block each other.

For example, you, like most people, may want to be happy, successful, loved and respected. These are your intentions.

Tomorrow a situation may arise that needs you to make a decision how to allocate your resources, either money, time or whatever. Now using your resources to complete or begin a new project may bring you success, but work against your wish for love, as it takes you away from your loved ones.

Many, many times in a day we are faced with these decisions between two or more intentions. And so what most of us do, is to choose say success, then in the next choice switch to love, then to happiness and so on.

This means that we start up one road, then go back and up another, back and up another over and over again. Despite all our efforts and travelling we keep ending up where we were.

Those people who are most single minded, choose consistently. At every point they choose the same thing. As a result they go further and further down that road, leading to more success, love or happiness.

This however can lead to having one thing, but missing out on the rest. There is a way to have everything, but we’ll discuss this later.

To choose happiness means going to sleep tonight having made the decision to be happy in the morning. Then whatever we decide or do, we do from happiness. We are happy so we…

This way we never get into the situation where we start to flounder. We only ever get into trouble, when we make our decisions for any other reason than choosing happiness. Once we drift off the path, it is easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of life and before we know it… we are so disorientated by life bouncing us around, we have forgotten who we are and what we really want.

Conventional wisdom tells us to make the best of what we have. If we have lemons, make lemonade. This is one of the main ways that we trap ourselves. Because we then believe that our life can only be as good as the raw materials we have and our ability to make something from these.

Instead decide what you want and let that set the tone. Then gather the raw materials you need. When we look at what we currently have we feel trapped and limited. When we start from a perspective of what we want, without limit, then we open up our imagination, creativity and enthusiasm. This is where we gain the inspiration and ability to create whatever we want.

Choosing to be happy first, broadens our perspective. We have more energy and creativity to see opportunities and act on them.

Feeling good, feeling happy and in love is nature’s guidance system. It is the way that we can know we are connected to the flow of life.

If we stay connected to that flow… our path is clear and we have all the motivation, energy and ability to do whatever we have to do.

When we feel anything other than happy and motivated it is because we drifted off our path and started to listen to others.

You were never put here to buy a nice house in a quiet suburb, fit in with your neighbours and make people feel good about the new dress they bought.

You are here as an expression of the evolutionary force of life to create new ways of expressing yourself. This is how you add value to the world. Not by becoming Clone No. 5890678.

So what does this mean. It means say what you think, do what makes you happy and in Joseph Campbell’s words ‘follow your bliss’. If you are happy and connected to the flow of life energy… your words or actions will not hurt anyone. To hurt another would create fear of retribution and so disturb your happiness.

So many people say to this, ‘But I can’t just worry about my happiness. I have responsibilities’.

You cannot effectively fulfil your responsibilities without happiness. If I asked you to give me a million pounds, what would be your response? Probably something like, ‘It would be nice to have it, to give it’. Even those who have millions, would say something like ‘I’m not made of money’ or ‘I earned mine through hard work and you should too’.

In other words they believe that they only have so much money and so they cannot freely give away all they have. In the same way, unless you know that you can dip into a limitless source of happiness and create more happiness whenever you want… you can never freely give happiness.

A person without happiness to smooth their words and actions creates friction. Their actions may on the surface seem to help, but they are performed at a cost to the person. This cost feels as if it is eroding the person, just as running a car without oil will damage it’s parts. And so they will sooner or later feel bitter or resentful and damaged by the wear and tear to their wellbeing in giving to another.

Throughout history people have looked at limitless patience and acts of kindness by people like Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tsu, Mother Theresa and so on. And they think this is a great example, I must live up to this.

And they try to follow the actions. But they feel burnt out, eroded and damaged. Then they beat themselves up and say I’m not as good as…

They went off the path when they copied the actions. Effective smooth action only comes after inspired thought. Inspired action can never follow frantic panicked action.

What they failed to understand, because they couldn’t see it, was that these individuals were already happy. Then because happiness smoothed their actions and words, they didn’t cause friction or damage to them. And so they could do these acts of kindness and be infinitely patient without costing them anything. In the same way, events that may look like being hugely painful were not painful to these individuals.

It is not that they are unique or special, in the sense that you could not achieve what they did. It is just that they approached life from a radically different perspective that enabled them to seem superhuman.

We will talk later about the Economic Mindset. Through this perspective it seems that only actions have value… but this isn’t really true. It is only true on the more superficial layers of life. Really though you may do something for another; you will in some way try to get rewarded or you’ll feel cheated.

Real happiness can never be bought or sold. Nor given or taken. It can only be chosen and enjoyed. You can never achieve enough to earn happiness. Nor can you manipulate circumstances enough to cause another to be happy.

More harm is done in this world by individuals, groups and nations who act from the arrogance of believing they could possibly know the best way forward for another, than from any number of individuals who act for their own happiness.

When one person says this is the right way, another sees something different and she says ‘No. This is the right way’. Both are certain that they are right. And each is in their own little world.

So now there can only be one right way. And so begins the fight. Either verbal, physical or psychological. Neither side will rest until their way has been upheld. Instead of appreciating the best in the other, now both look for weakness and blame.

It is as if there is a balloon being blown up between them. The longer it goes on for, the more distanced the pair become. The more distance the more critical of each other they become. When they get far enough away from each other there becomes nothing about the other that they like, or see as worthwhile.

If you have an image of what is right for someone else. Then that begins to strip away their free will. You may be doing it for the best of intentions, just wanting for them to be happy. But it is based in a belief that they need X to be happy.

They don’t.

They will find their own way to happiness if they are allowed and allow themselves. Whenever we hold an image that is best for another, we cannot help but try to shape them in that direction. And if they go in any way other than the direction we believe to be for the best, we think they are wrong.

Then we either tell them one way or another that they are wrong or between us the balloon comes between us and we become distanced. From this point on, you can only see the lost opportunities for the other.

We do not know enough to even work out what is best for ourselves, let alone another. There are so many variables and unseen opportunities to life, that you can never know let alone calculate into your equations of what is best that no one person, not even ten people together could be able to plot the best way forward for an individual. All you can do is help them to access their own guidance and trust in themselves and the Universe.