What Would It (Really) Take to Be Happy?

Even for those of us who love personal development and believe in creating our own reality, it’s so easy to become caught up in living the busy life; the life we tell ourselves we need to live in order to get ‘there’.

There, of course, is that magical place where we are completely and deeply happy and fulfilled.

Where everyday we wake up brimming with internal motivation, inspired by the mere fact of our wonderful lives.

There is where the way that we make a living is utterly aligned with our deepest gifts, our greatest passions, our very purpose for being alive.

Where money, time, responsability to others and certainly mundane day-to-day tasks like running errands or keeping the house tidy have no bond over us.

Where our entire existance and every part of it is entirely ‘by design’ and there is not one little thing left that we are doing ‘because we have to’.

There, of course, is that magical place that most people don’t truly believe exists and even if they do –

They sure don’t believe it could exist for them.

Take a look at your life. A no-holds-barred completely honest review of who you are and what you do.

Your work situation? Do you love it? Really love it? (Any response less than a firm and resounding YES, by the way, is a no)

Your personal life. Is it fantastic? Nothing you’d change?

How about your living situation?

Your finances?

Your relationship?

Your spiritual life?

And what about your ‘one day’ life? That life of travel and adventure, and spontaneity. Are you getting any closer?

This is not an exercise to depress you with all that you don’t yet have; all that you’ve yet to create. It’s an exercise in honesty.

If you truly believe in creating your own reality, then NOW is the time to do that. Yes?

From personal experience I know how easy it can be to kid yourself that your life is just as you desire, by virtue of the fact that it’s definitely so much better than it used to be, that you say no to more that you don’t want and yes to chasing more of your dreams than ever you used to. Or that you can look at the way most people live (and seem to constantly complain) and honestly thank the Lord or whomever it is you would thank that you have YOUR life, that you know you don’t have to accept the status quo and that you’re so grateful to not be doing so but that yet at the same time –

This? Isn’t exactly what you had in mind when you first stepped off that ledge and made up your mind to live entirely on your terms.

You thought it would be easier.

Take less time.

Happen more … organically.

What you didn’t realise was that you have yourself to contend with. If it came down purely to rejecting other people’s standards for happiness and success, that would be easy! Rejecting your own deeply conditioned musts and shoulds is another thing altogether.

And it seems that for every step that takes you that little bit closer to living your dream life, something within you pulls you back.

Fear of not having enough money leads you to crumble and give in to making money in ways that while not awful are definitely not absolutely fulfilling and in alignment for you.

Fear of putting the real you out there and being rejected or in some way failing stops you from being completely honest and so you don’t. You come very close, maybe even just a few degrees off, but you hold your deepest desires and message tight to your heart. What if nobody else gets it? What if they don’t want to hear it? What if they just don’t care. Easier to craft a message and establish your uniqueness around what people want to hear. Easier to pretend that it’s enough for you when really it never will be and you know it.

Fear of giving your deepest dreams and desires your all and still failing stops you from ever playing full out, and so you don’t. Simpler to imagine that one day you’ll throw everything you have at making your dreams come true and that it will work then to actually make today that one day and face the possibility that it might not work first time, or even on the 100th time. Simpler to imagine that holding back like this can still make you happy, when the reality is that even if you had to pick yourself up after 100 attempts and then 100 more at least that would be 200 times you’d gone to bed tonight absolutely sure that you were being completely and unreservedly true to yourself.

Fear of walking away from so-called security stops you from living how you want to live right now, and so you don’t. One day you will travel. One day you’ll put your own wants first. One day – surely! – you’ll be able to afford that dream home. You see other people rent their dream home now, or set up an online business and start working from remote countries where luxury living and adventure comes at a lower cost than you could ever imagine, but you tell yourself it’s not the right time for you. Not realistic. Not how life is meant to be lived.

Fear of losing your relationship stops you from being honest about what you really want and need, so you tell yourself to stop having such over the top expectations and to suck it up.

Of course fear is really only one part of it.

Fear will hold you back, bind you, tell you that you can’t or that it’s not your time, but the other side of the coin is belief.

If you truly believed that you CAN create your own reality and that you have infinite choice over how to live your life and what to make of it, you would be out there doing exactly what you need to do to live your dreams NOW.

So why don’t you truly believe?

What lies are you telling yourself?

What penance do you think you still need to pay?

Why do you even buy in to the concept of having to pay your dues, when you know that everything life has to offer is available for the taking now and that all you have to do is reach out for it?

And what is the very very worst that you think might happen if you do decide, right now, yes – today, to play full out at living your dream life?

Which is a more awful fate, really?

Believing in your ability to live life your way and never fully attempting to do so?

Or picking yourself up 10, 20, 100, 1000 times or more but doing so after giving it your ALL and knowing that you are truly and absolutely taking full responsibility for your own happiness? And that each time you do pick yourself up you’re learning. Growing. Becoming clearer. And also, each time, getting closer to that dream life, to being ‘there’.

You can continue to live life just a few degrees shy of what you really want.

Perhaps it is so much better than the life you used to live, or the life you see being lived by everybody around you; those who never question anything and assume that they have no choice.

Or perhaps it’s the very worst thing in the world to know that you do have the power, the choice, and absolute control over your own happiness –

But yet you’re choosing to pretend you don’t.

You decide.

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