You Get to Choose Happiness

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.