My Five-Year Plan for Happiness
Will you be happy in five years?
If you are happy now, you might also be in five years. If you are not happy now, why not?
Why not choose happiness now?
Choose Happiness Now
Happiness is something most want. Gratitude, satisfaction, inner peace, and mutual affection for yourself and others? What’s not to like? Instead, we live a life full of blockages to happiness, barriers seem to be “just the way life is.” We partake of others’ ‘shoulds’ and believe that happiness is not our natural state.
Happiness doesn’t depend on things going right. Circumstances reveal your character and temperament. Happiness doesn’t depend on external success. It is loving kindness and wisdom; we communicate more effectively and make better decisions.
You can choose happiness now.
Since happiness is our natural inner state, you can access it anytime, but it becomes easier as you remove the rubble of societal expectations and iron out your false self. Understanding that happiness comes naturally is the first step; letting go of the garbage is a life-long pursuit. Taken from You Can Be Happy No Matter What, this requires you to understand several things:
- Emotions are a feedback mechanism that tells you how you are doing.
- Thinking creates your experiences and is modifiable through mindfulness work.
- Moods are longer-term waves of emotions and thinking patterns that fluctuate over short and longer periods of time.
- Common Humanity. We all suffer, and common fears keep us from happiness.
- Living in the present moment is key to living efficiently without harassing negative thoughts and emotions.
You Are Responsible For Happiness
You don’t need to change anything to be happier in your life.
You are responsible for the happiness you have or do have not in your life. You can change. Indeed, you are the only one who can change since you cannot control anything but what happens in your body. You aren’t out there looking for flaws; you are removing obstacles to find that happiness is already inside you. It is your gift; look deeply at your soul and decide where it lives inside of you.
You can decide to feel happier despite things “not going right” in your life. Things don’t go right; they go the way they go, and you accept that, or you suffer. We have no power to change anything that we don’t control (and we only control our own thoughts and feelings), and thinking we can change things is why you are unhappy. Expecting life to be different than it is. Not living in the moment because you are squandering time on the past or worrying about the unknowable future. Missing out on the now because you are trying to make it something different than it is.
Being unhappy is easy; just have high expectations! Unfulfilled expectations are gratuitous suffering. Instead, be present and find joy in the moment. Gratitude is the key to finding joy. To me, this smacks of a spiritual process. Since the opposite of scarcity is enough, knowing not to judge yourself harshly or compare yourself at all brings about the spiritual state of being enough, having enough. Just being happy now and finding joy in gratitude for life.
Happiness is Neither Selfish Nor Frivolous
Happiness is not selfish or frivolous; it is worthy.
Don’t feel bad or like you are selfish when you care for yourself and make yourself happy. That’s life! And don’t think that it is not necessary. Who would do your life for you if you ran out of gas?
Happiness is inside you. It is an inside job. You decide. Circumstances don’t make a person, like money; they just make him more of who he already is.
Just get out of your way and see if happiness is already inside of you. If you play with your kids or find flow in a hobby, you live in natural inner peace. This peace, this state of mind, is always available to you if you keep removing the blockages. What is stopping you from doing it right now?
What is blocking you? Sometimes your wants and desires, sometimes expecting things to be different than they are, and sometimes you choose to keep the thoughts that make you suffer. Sometimes you decide to let them go and let the happiness that is already inside you shine.
Imperfect circumstances and chaos are there if you want them. Or, you could choose the happiness that is naturally inside you. Just keep removing the blockages.
Unhappiness
Unhappiness is inevitable at times. That’s life!
Forgive yourself when you are miserable or angry/judgmental; it happens!
You start again every day and can un-teach yourself. Unhappiness is a choice, not an enemy.
Instead, choose happiness and self-love and inner peace. Drop the should, other people’s baggage, and garbage you carry with you in general and move on. How do you choose to see the world? The way you choose to see it creates the world you see.
Self-acceptance and being authentic are possible if you choose to see the world in the now.
Once you know that happiness is a choice, love is a choice, and suffering is optional rather than inevitable, well, then you can decide how you choose to see the world and create the world you see and want.
There is something you now must decide. Easy. But an amazing adventure. Decide now if you want to be happy for the next five years. Not a big deal. Either be happy or not for the next five years.
Easy, right? But an amazing adventure.
Disclaimers
Not everyone will be happy. Since happiness requires wisdom, hard work, and discipline, results depend on participation.
There is no limit to happiness. You (and I) can always be happier tomorrow or next week than we are today. This has a little bit to do with hope, I think. It takes five years to build anything worth keeping around for the rest of your life.
Happiness in Five Years
Circumstances reveal yourself. Success arives when you can find sources of both internal and external love. When you can change. When you remove ego from the world and move love from an enemy to a priority.
Life gives you all you need; every single resource necessary to build a happy life. How you choose to spend your time is all that matters. You won’t care about money or time anymore, only regret you spent them.
When you decide to be happy now, problems don’t go away. Life is the problems that seem in your way. Removing obstacles from your life is life. Bring attention and love to the problems; how you can open up the flow of happiness by letting go?
