Prioritize Happiness

How often have you made decisions based on what you are expected to do rather than what would truly make you happy, or even what feels right to you? Of course many of our better decisions prioritize long term happiness over short lived happiness. We don't eat the second piece of cake because the pleasure doesn't outweigh the guilt or upset stomach that comes immediately after the last bite is eaten. We don't scream expletives at our boss when we get treated unfairly because we would get fired. But what about bigger, even life changing decisions? Do we make these based on what would truly make us happy and fulfilled? Or do we make them based on the expectations of others, or even our own expectation that to be happy we have to maintain a certain income level, or appear a certain way?

One of the best things you can do is realize the difference between what you falsely assume will make you happy and what does. Advertising is the art of making someone believe that a product they don't need will make them happy. In our world we are bombarded with ads that tell us nice cars and nice clothes will make us happy, that certain credit card companies and banks are our trusted friends. We are very seldom told that debt and materialism breaks up families and destroys lives on a daily basis. What corporation could we get to sponsor that message?

On social media we see people as they want to be seen. We see vacation photos from that friend who has enough money and vacation time to go to some beautiful exotic spot but we don't hear about the food poisoning incident that happened on the same trip. We see adorable pictures of toddlers but don't hear about how that same kid is going through a biting phase. Even most of the people we see everyday show us the side of them that they want us to see. We don't have a clear view of what other people's lives are like, and we have no idea what happiness really looks like for them or us. We see other's excitement with getting thing, achieving things and doing things and mistake it for happiness. We think if we can get, achieve, do the same things we will be happy when they could be the furthest thing from what we really want.

Most of us are too busy to really get to know ourselves and don't take the time to figure out what will make us happy. We are too preoccupied working towards the things or waiting for the things that we have wrongly assumed will make us happy. So take some time just to be. Differentiate between societal pressures, cultural conditioning and what you are actually called to do.

Another frequent mistake we make is thinking that it is only our own happiness that matters. If you aren't treating everyone... and I'll even go so far as to say everything, with love you are sabotaging your own happiness. Sometimes it is impossible for us to do at the time. If that is the case, it is enough just to realize that your own unhappiness is caused by your lack of love in a situation, even if you can't find it in yourself to forgive or let go of frustration at that moment. Almost all problems in the world are created when someone puts their own happiness over someone else's. We can see this easily when others are guilty of this but not as easily when it's ourselves.

This doesn't mean we should be martyrs or that we should never end up disappointing other people. It just means that acting selfishly will always turn out the same way as eating the second piece of cake. It always sounds cliches or corny when you hear that we are all in this together but it's one of the most difficult and most important truths to completely realize. This computer I'm typing on took the contribution, work and intelligence of thousands of people dead and alive, to create. That includes Bill Gates and all the underpaid workers who mined the raw materials for it.  Most of us learned at an early age that what goes around comes around, sometimes immediately and other times years down the road. The idea that someone got rewarded for bad behavior or got away with something is the same kind of illusion as the perfect lives we see on Facebook.

For myself I know that the harder I try to be happy the more unhappy I become. The more I think I need, the more lack I feel. The more I need things to be a certain way the more discontented I become. So lately I've been practicing letting go of the things I used to think I need to be happy. I don't need a lot of friends, I don't need to have a career people respect, I don't need to have a nice house, a nice car, or nice clothes. I don't need to be pretty, I don't need to be liked or charismatic, I don't need to have well behaved children, I don't need a perfect spouse. 

I need to feel like I'm doing my best, I need time to create, to contribute, to imagine, to appreciate people, beauty and nature, I need time just to be. The most beautiful thing about this? All I need to achieve it is just resist the distracting false paths to happiness and that's all I'm left with. All that time I spent chasing happiness I was already happy and I never knew it.