Are You Happy Where You Are?
choose joy
why we need to find happiness where we are.
Are you someone who views happiness as something out there? As something we achieve? As a place to get to one day only after you’ve checked all of the boxes?
Are you someone who believes that when you achieve X you will be happy? When you finally get that job, that partner, that body, THEN you will be happy?
It’s a theory a lot of us think and you are not alone. We think that once we have the money, the fame, the best seller, the most followers, the expensive bag, the second home, the fancy car; whatever “it” may be for you, that then and only then will you be as happy as you know you can be.
You don’t practice happiness from now because you don’t believe that you need to be happy now. You live your life believing that you don’t have to be happy until you get those things that you need. You believe that you don’t need to feel gratitude for a life that you don’t even have yet. Things are “fine” now but they aren’t as good as they can be, so we’ll just wait to be happy until we get all the things we think will magically make us feel different.
So we dream of this future life, we dream of how happy we will be in years to come, but happiness is not some distant place in the future. It isn’t waiting for us to find it under a rock or in another person. It’s deep within all of us, just waiting to be found. Just waiting to be noticed and acknowledged. Because happiness is always with us. It’s not something that comes and goes. It is always within us. But it’s up to us to choose happiness. It’s up to us to say today regardless of what happens to me, I will choose joy. It’s up to us to say I am grateful for where I am right here and right now, because when we are able to live from a place of gratitude, we give happiness a chance to grow. We see the positives start to flow in our lives as happiness starts to peek through even the darkest skies and the deepest cracks.
The truth is happiness is not a place we will eventually get to one day if we don’t find happiness where we are right now. It’s something that we learn, that we have to practice, that doesn’t just come naturally.
If you think about the people who have all the money, houses, vacations, and everything they could possibly dream of yet who are still miserable… there is something to be said about that. It’s because all they are looking for is more of this and more of that. They keep trying to fill this hole, they tell themselves that once they get that job, that paycheck, that partner, that body, they will be happy. But what is so detrimental about all of this is that what they are really telling themselves is that once they get whatever it is they want, that then and only then will they be happy.
Happiness starts now. It grows from the ground up. It starts with the smallest thing and grows and grows. You won’t find it in another person. You won’t find it at the bank. You won’t find it in the refrigerator. You won’t find it in an office. It starts with you.
It’s a daily choice, every single moment of every single day- to choose love, to choose joy, to choose to be happy exactly where you are.
