“ Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”~ Maria Robinson
Perhaps you are not particularly happy with some aspect of your life, or maybe even disappointed with it in general. You are not where you thought you would be, not who you thought you would be, and not living the life you thought you would live. This can lead to feelings of sadness, depression and negativity.
Some get stuck in this sense of disappointment and live life lamenting what might have been. They feel they cannot be happy because of what has not happened or is not there. They conclude the rest of their life will not be any happier or any better: the die has been cast.
There is a better way to deal with this. If our goal is to be happy and enjoy life, it is really a matter of deciding to be happy and deciding to enjoy life. Note that in this case the stimulus for being happy comes from inside of us rather than outside.
Being happy now does not depend on certain conditions being met in the outside world. There are too many variables out there that we cannot control, so we must learn to be happy in spite of what is or is not in our lives.
How do we do this? Simple as it might sound, it really is a matter of focusing on what we do have in our lives, rather than what we perceive to be missing. I once had a poster on my office wall that said, “It’s not how much we have, but how much we enjoy that creates happiness.”
So if you have been down in the dumps, figuring you lost the “good life” lottery, it is time to think again. Make a list of everything that is not wrong in your world. Add to it everything that is good, and that you really ought to be thankful for.
Then make a list of all of the things you can do that are enjoyable, and all the thoughts you could think that would make you feel happy. If you do this for the rest of your life, you actually could live “happily ever after.”
Copyright © Gwen Randall-Young, All Rights Reserved. Contact us if you would like permission to reprint.
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