I Believe Happiness Is An Inside Job
By Troy Rampy, Editor, The Wellness Blog™
As we begin this new year, many of us will sit down to consider what it is we want to attract to ourselves and manifest in the coming 12 months. Typically we will consider the key areas of our life such as health and well-being, relationships, family, personal and spiritual growth, finances and career, home, travel, recreation, social life, and others.
Hopefully we’ll take time to identify our personal goals within each of those categories, then set target dates for achieving them, and delineate specific steps to help insure positive outcomes. This is a good way, in my experience, to begin a fulfilling year.
But I think the step that many of us miss is to first determine what true happiness is, then use our personal definition as a talisman for determining our goals. Otherwise, we may find ourselves proceeding willy-nilly toward peripheral or culturally influenced objectives that often leave us feeling empty and unsatisfied. And as poet William Stafford warns, “… following the wrong god home we may miss our star”.
So let’s take a moment to consider the question, “What is true happiness”?
Okay, of course you have a sense of what happiness is. It’s one of those things like good art: not easy to define but you know it when you see it. But I think it’s helpful to try to wrap our thoughts and feelings around some kind of definition, or at least a description. That way, we’re more likely to know exactly what it is we want. To get us started, here’s my own drive-by attempt at describing happiness …
When I was young, I used to look only outside myself for happiness. Back then, it came in the form of a new friend, a good grade, or a favorite song. In my early ’20s, happiness was my ’66 white Ford Mustang with “four on the floor” and a broad blue competition stripe at the bottom. Then it was the former high school cheerleader who became an airline stewardess and stole my heart. But when she left, it took me 17 years to get over the hurt.
Happiness has also appeared as a big, vanillin, butterscotch-flavored Chardonnay or a deeply rich, bramble berry Zinfandel. It has come as the feel of wind and spray in my face while navigating a sailboat between the islands of Greece. I’ve felt happy eating an apricot, facilitating a meaningful workshop or group, writing a coherent blog post, and watching “Shakespeare in Love” for the fifth time, “Groundhog Day” for the seventh, “The Graduate” for the ninth, or “The Godfather” for more times than I care to remember.
I’ve experienced an overwhelming sense of happiness at the birth of each of my children. For over 20 years my happiness mostly has been about being their father. Ariana and Adrian are two of my most favorite and beloved people. What an honor and joy it is to be their father!
Happiness for me has sometimes been about big things like excellence and potential realized. Often it’s about the small things: my towels being clean and folded neat, all with the stripe on the right-hand side (I know … it’s a little OCD); my steak coming off the grill rare and juicy; finally having the ornaments that I like on the Christmas tree.
But when I consider the happiness that is within me, that which is mine regardless of the circumstances of my life, then I feel I am still learning. It’s a work in progress: sometimes I’m happy for absolutely no reason at all; sometimes it still takes some outside circumstance(s) to light up my heart.
Happiness, I think, is partly a state of mind, partly a felt sense in my body. It’s appreciating and wanting what I already have … while paradoxically still yearning for more and better. It’s feeling love for others, rather than trying to get others to love me. It’s about those rare times of silence and stillness when I so infrequently meditate. It’s about love, truth and beauty.
Yep, I guess it’s true. Mostly I think happiness is about love, for myself and others … and knowing that all is right and well in the world, even when I can’t see it.
So go ahead, take a shot at defining happiness for yourself. Then, with that information in mind, identify the goals that are most likely to create and/or embellish happiness in your life during this coming year so that you may indeed continue to follow your own star.
