You Can Choose Happiness Despite the Obstacles

I’m delighted to introduce my first guest blogger, Ken Wert of Meant to be Happy, winner of The Best Personal Development Blog 2011.

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” ~ Gandhi

Happiness is no arbitrary emotion.

Granted, happiness may often be experienced as a fleeting condition, but it is not due to some unpredictable set of circumstances that spontaneously creates it then equally spontaneously runs off with it.

Happiness is, in fact, the predictable result of the correct and consistent application of certain timeless principles of thought, attitude, belief and behavior.

In other words, human happiness is largely a product of choice. We can simply choose to be happy. But what does that mean in light of the obstacles to happiness that so often get in the way of the experience?

Following, are three of those obstacles that can limit happiness and ways we can grant ourselves permission to be happy anyway.

Obstacle #1: Dwelling on Negatives

Roses come with thorns. Sunshine gives us life and sunburns. People are dual natured with both character strengths and character flaws. Spring indiscriminately brings us flowers and weeds. Cars transport us to our families and they sometimes crash into them. Parents give their children life and they give them neurotic complexes as well.

In other words, life is a mixed bag.

Just about every good has an element of bad somehow connected to it. Almost all positives have a negative flipside. Every silver lining has its cloud. All light has at its outer edge, darkness.

But here’s the thing: We have the power to pick which side to pay attention to. What we choose to focus on determines the level of happiness we experience even as roses prick fingers and sun burns skin and parents parent imperfectly.

It’s our choice to see the flower or the weeds below it. The direction of our gaze determines our view. We can choose to focus on what we love or what we hate at work. We choose to pay attention to the ugliness of the nightly news or the goodness played out everyday in our neighborhoods and families.

The choice is ours and ours alone. It’s in the tilt of our heads, the perspective we choose to look on life with, the condition of our thoughts and the quality of our choices.

And still so many people choose to pick and criticize, complain, whine, moan and groan about all that’s ugly and negative around them. They forget that rain brings more than wetness and cold. It also brings life. They forget that our challenges bring more than pain and sorrow and difficulty. They can provide us opportunities to build character and inner strength as well.

We so often and too easily forget to recognize that there is so much more than the things we don’t like in life. While the rose does indeed have thorns, every thorn is also attached to the branch or stem of a rose. You see, it’s all in the way we choose to see things.

So grant yourself permission to be happy, right now. Simply allow life to be the mess it often is with all its dual conditions of something good associated with something undesirable. We can choose to see the ugly, dirty side of life or the birth of beauty that so often springs out of the muck and mire.

Obstacle #2: Self-Doubt

We may have been raised by critical parents. Or perhaps we were compared to a sibling or neighbor. Maybe it’s the media constantly showing us what we’re not. Or possibly it’s just a part of our flawed natures. But whatever its source, we are very good at doubting ourselves.

The problem, of course, is that self-doubt often leads to immobility. We stop and hesitate and stutter in our steps toward the life we dream of.

But we can give ourselves permission to act in the face of our doubts. We can grant ourselves the right to be human. We can grant ourselves permission to doubt, and then rise above those doubts, letting doubt have its say, then ignoring its plea to remain in the spot we’ve stayed in for too long.

And yet self-doubt seems to keep finding its way back home despite the actions we take and the growth we experience.

We look in the mirror and see flaws while we look at others and see only perfection. We feel uncomfortable, sometimes even within our own comfort zones. We secretly think others are better, prettier, cooler, smarter. Our insides ache to overcome our insecurities and yet they seem to follow us wherever we go.

We look at the facts and see the results and know the meaning of so many parts of who we are and what we’ve done cracked and broken on the sidewalk of our lives. There is a map, a history, an autobiographical reality we can look at and weigh and measure and in each category of life, it’s clear that we just don’t measure up.

And so what!

It simply doesn’t matter. At all. So give yourself permission to be imperfect. I know I don’t look like Brad Pitt or think like Albert Einstein or have the success of Bill Gates!

And chances are that you don’t look like a super model or dress like a movie star or play piano like a concert pianist or have the character of Mother Teresa. What’s it all mean?

Oh yeah, NOTHING!

Grant yourself the permission needed to simply be who you are at this moment! Learn. Grow. Improve. But accept yourself today as you learn and grow.

In the end, we can dwell on what we don’t have and don’t like or on what we do have and do like. Neither attitude will change reality. But the former certainly changes the way we feel about it.

Obstacle #3: Trials and Tribulations

Mom may have hit you. Or maybe dad abused you. Life crashed and pinched you into a corner and just kept beating and beating and beating down on you in a relentless avalanche of adversity. And so no one really understands you. No one can fully empathize with you. Life hurts and is unfair and you feel it just couldn’t care less about you.

And some of that very well may be true. Still, life is full of two kinds of abused people: Those who define their reality by the abuse they experienced and those who tuck it away on a back shelf and create a new reality for themselves that is much bigger and more compelling than their abuse ever dreamt of becoming.

You have permission to live your life free of the shackles of the past. You have permission to stand and punch your way through the challenges of life, no longer letting history predict your future.

Grant yourself the permission needed to discard old, worn-out thoughts and replace them with new, vibrant ones, ones focused on the rose, the warmth of the sun and what is happening here, right now.

See the birds singing, the kids laughing, the music playing. Be filled with gratitude that the heart is pumping, the eyes seeing, your thoughts still, calm, at peace, focused on the moment, on what’s happening now, around you, above you, under your feet, inside the miracle called your body, between you and the person you’re with.

As you focus on now, yesterday and all its disappointments and even its horrors are replaced by a simple joy, a single thread of recognition strung into an eternal point called The Present.

Each present moment evaporating into the next present moment, leaves no room to mourn over a former life no longer directly under your feet.

Afterthoughts

Obstacles abound. Detours litter the road of life. Some of that road will be washed out, muddy, swampy, precariously dangerous. But happiness is not a prize waiting at the end of the road. It can be carried with us as we travel it, safely tucked away in the chambers of our hearts.

But how does it get there? We give ourselves permission to hold it there by virtue of the choices we make in spite of the challenges we face. In other words, we grant ourselves permission.

Ken Wert is a teacher and personal development blogger at Meant to be Happy where he inspires readers to live with purpose, act with character, think with clarity and grow with courage. Sign up for his free eBook, A Walk Through Happiness and newsletter! Connect with him on Twitter.