Who is responsible for your happiness? Many people are seeking to find validation, fulfillment, and happiness from outside of themselves. From others or from what they do or what they have materialistically. Just who is responsible for your happiness? Have you ever asked yourself that question? Or, is it possible that in your experience of unhappiness or a lack of happiness that you find places to hang the hat of that unhappiness? Do you think you are unhappy because of what someone else said or did? Are you unhappy because you can’t buy the latest in thing that you really want? Stop and think about this, is your happiness dependent upon someone or something else?
Do you ever just sit still – still with yourself in a quiet environment with no distraction in a state of simply being you? Would you know what that would be like for you? Does that sound rather daunting or intimidating? Do you have the feeling that you would find this very uncomfortable?
Many people believe that they are unhappy because someone else said this or that or someone else didn’t understand them or validate them or agree with them. Many believe that their happiness is directly tied to the emotions that are felt in reaction to others. That is a way of actually abdicating your responsibility for your own happiness.
To choose to believe that others have that much control, any control really, over whether you are happy or not, is to set yourself up to stay stuck in an unhappy, frustrated, and/or angry state of mind.
In life, we are either learning, growing and/or evolving – or we are protecting. It is not possible to do both learn and protect at the same time. Protection comes from a victim mindset. Protection blocks learning. Protection blocks your ability to create, fulfill and experience your own happiness.
Have you taken responsibility for your own happiness? What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you read that you are responsible for your own happiness? Check in with yourself, honestly. Do you still think or believe that you may be feeling unhappy because of someone else? If so, how can you challenge that thought, that belief? Do you understand, on an emotional level, that you will need to change that belief in order to take responsibility for your own happiness?
© A.J. Mahari, June 2, 2013 – All rights reserved.
