Everyone wants his or her life to be better than it is. Even if you have everything working for you, you still want more. That feeling is human nature.
That feeling reflects the underlying fear that most people exhibit—either openly or deep within out of their awareness. The fear is not having enough. Even very rich people often think they do not have enough money.
They fear losing it and not being able to get it back fast enough. No matter how much money they make, that fear holds them tightly in bondage. That fear leads to the all too common dis-ease of workaholism.
A second fear plays into the lives of most people, insidiously driving them to always need to do more. That fear is not being enough. Those people lack self love so they constantly need to prove how good they are—to others. By seeking approval and praise from others, they think they can calm or even erase their feelings of inadequacy.
Not possible. Only you can erase your fears–by loving yourself first.
Yesterday marked the 38th anniversary of my marriage–except that marriage ended seven years ago.
Over the past seven years that date came and went unnoticed by me. For some reason yesterday it came into my awareness and hit really hard. I felt very sad–until I caught myself in that place of unhappiness.
I know it does not serve anyone to stay in an unhappy place. Dang! it lowers your immune system, causes you to focus on other things that feel sad or bad. It makes you attract unhappiness! Yuck!
I immediately grabbed a happy memory and relived it by focusing my attention there.
Wow! Not only did I instantly change my mood–more than that, much more than that–I remembered how we talked long and hard, coming to a mutual agreement that it no longer made sense to stay married.
We had not stopped loving one another. We faced the reality that we each had gone our separate ways and being together stopped each of us from truly living in happiness.
When we did something I loved then he was not really happy–just went along because it was, so to speak, my turn. The same held true when we did something that he loved to do.
No way did we share a definition of happiness!
I looked at the wonderful life I live now and realized I could never have done what I did or do now with the people I am with and the place where I live if I had stayed in that unhappy marriage.
Perhaps, even more importantly, I realized that staying in an unhappy situation revealed a lack of self love. Thank goodness I “woke up” and changed my whole way of being seven years ago.
Gratitude swept through me for all I am, all I get to do and all I have now. And I am also grateful for all that happened that got me here–incuding the ending of a 31 year marriage.
How grateful am I that I know I choose how I feel in any given moment? Words cannot describe the peace I know.
To live in happiness you must first know and live love–of yourself first. Then you will be able to give it to others.