In Charge Of Your Own Happiness
You are in charge and responsible for your happiness
That’s it.
No one is going to bail you out.
No one is going to fix shit for you.
No one is going to give you answers.
Not your partner. Not your kids. Not your parents. Not your friends.
There’s no test.
There’s no do-overs.
You reap what you sow. You sleep in the bed you made.
End. Of. Story.
And that to me, is the best news ever. It’s cathartic.
It means you must create the happiness you seek. You must see, shape, form, design the world you wish for. You must embody, manifest, and perceive your life the way you want to because that is how it comes to be true.
This isn’t simply a lofty, philosophical thought that you can maybe ponder or entertain if you ever develop a desire to do so.
This is the underlying nature of how you think and behave. You either see yourself as a victim of what happens to you, helpless to what the world throws at you, or as someone given opportunity to change, grow, see differently, and expand; an active participant in your life.
You either see uncomfortable feelings as suffering you have to deal with or signals you have to learn from.
I always joke with my wife that I’m in charge of my own happiness and she’s in charge of her own happiness too. She can’t depend on me to make her happy and I cannot depend on her to make her happy.
But to expand on that concept, what I mean is that I need to be happy first and foremost. I can’t depend on her to solve my unhappiness, to fill some void for me. I need to make my mindset be that we create our experience, not that our experiences are created for us by an external force - that happiness is a higher baseline for perception or interacting with the world around me.
I 100% trust her wholeheartedly but in order for me to love her and be there for her, I have to be able to give her love from a place of abundant love for myself. Because if I don’t love myself, I cannot love her to the best of my ability.
I want to love her from an intrinsic desire to make her happy - because it makes me happy to make her happy.
Because. It. Makes. Me. Happy.
That is going to be the thing that keeps me going. Because I’m continuing to pursue the things that make me happy.
I don’t want to be dependent on her to make me happy when I am sad, to make me happy when she’s perhaps not happy. I want to move forward, to be consciously driven to action because I am doing the things that I want for happiness. Otherwise, I am fostering a toxic mentality of needing her to fill a void and not taking control of my own life.
What if she’s unhappy? Should she still prioritize making me happy over herself? Then, our motives and desires are unaligned. Why would she attempt to make me happy when it makes her unhappy and vice versa.
There will always be things that make us unhappy. None of us is guaranteed a happy life.
If we want meaning we have to create it. If we want to find peace, we need to know there’s a purpose for suffering.
So get out and pursue the things that make you happy. Pursue the mindset that embodies that happiness.
You are in charge of that happiness for yourself.
Whether that’s pursuing a passion and turning that it into a viable career rather than a dead-end job to pay for your lifestyle.
Whether that’s pursuing hobbies and interests that others in your circle of friends and family may not understand or appreciate. You will find new friends that do by the way.
Whether that’s finding someone that you are happy pursuing for the rest of your life to make happy.
Your happiness is your own responsibility. And it’s that mindset of seeking happiness and being the sole one responsible for it that it important.