No man is happy who does not think himself so. – Publius Syrus
If you need one of these to feel happy, the problem might not be your lack of money. Allow yourself to be happy and enjoy what you have.
What does that mean?
This quote, if worded as a question, makes a little more sense to me. It would be: “From whom do you need permission in order to feel good about yourself?”
I believe the quote itself answers the question. If you don’t give yourself that permission, no one else, and nothing else, can possibly hope to be able to do it for you.
Yes, a trinket might provide a brief distraction from your unhappiness, and you might mistakenly label that sensation “happiness.” The same can be said for a pleasant companion.
But until you decide that you are going to allow yourself to be happy, you will never will be. The easy solution is to think yourself to be happy. Nothing else will hae a lasting impact on your lack of happiness.
Why is attitude important?
To me, attitude is what this quote is all about. If you have a pro-happy attitude, you’re far more likely to find, see, and seek happiness. If you don’t have a pro-happy attitude, how difficult is it going to be to find, see, or seek happiness? I don’t imagine that it’s going to be particularly easy, do you?
That is the core of the quote, that you must first give yourself permission before you can truly be happy. At one point, we all knew how to do that. As babies, we could be happy with nothing more than a finger and a puddle of drool.
But somehow, as adults, we have too many rules. We have to have a particular car before we can be happy about our car. It has to have certain features and accessories, or we won’t be happy. The same could be said for computers, cell phones, houses, spouses, and any number of other silly things.
Where can I apply this in my life?
There are many areas in your life where you can be happy, or be other-than-happy. Again, we can be happy by rules, by having what you think you have to have to be able to allow yourself to be happy, or you can simply declare yourself eligible to be happy right now.
Yes, it sounds almost simplistically easy. There aren’t any rules, there aren’t any complex formulas or rituals to complete. To that I would say simply “Yep!” It really is that easy. Not that there aren’t times when you won’t be happy, pain comes to mind, but those are momentary and transitory.
If you decide you will live your life from a place of happiness as your default status, you will find yourself happy more often than not. However, if you decide you aren’t going to allow yourself to be happy yet, you will find that you aren’t going to be very happy.
Grab some paper and make a list of parts of your life where you aren’t very happy. Write down all the reasons of which you can think which explain why you aren’t happy. Write as many down as you can for each item on the list, and keep after it until you absolutely cannot think of any more.
Now take a look at your lists. Now take a moment to think about what rules you have that these items on your lists are violating. Do you see how your rules are preventing you from being happy? How much happier do you think you could be if you got rid of some of the rules?
To be honest, they aren’t all your rules, are they? There are some from your parents, some from society, and still others which are cultural in nature. Because some of the rules are enforced by outside entities, you may not always be willing or able to change them, but I believe you should at least consider the possibilities, and the consequences.
Look at your lists and see if you can see any patterns. Are there several rules tied to not being rich enough, influential enough, or powerful enough? That might well include rules that require you to have trinkets that require money, like jewelry, cars, houses, or other luxuries.
The idea is to try to find the one thing that will help you the most. Once you have found a rule you want to change, start by trying to find people who are happy even though they don’t have what it is your rule(s) require you to have.
Are the only people in the world who are happy in possession of a Ferrari (or BMW or Mercedes or…)? So how silly is it to have that a rule that precludes you from truly being happy while you still drive an old Datsun?
Happiness is what you make it to be. There are people who are happy in abject poverty (at least by our standards). They obviously don’t have rules for happiness that include money. So why do you?
These are the kinds of questions I hope you ask yourself as you try to figure out how to give yourself permission to be happy. It is only going to be as hard to do as your rules make it. Decide to be happy.
From: Twitter, @_inspirational_
confirmed at : http://www.quotes.net/quote/4344
Photo by FotoSleuth
