Happiness Outside In

You have dinner with friends, you play a couple of highly competitive sets of tennis, you watch the sunset over a lake, at a flea market you find the perfect desk chair for next to nothing, and you're happy! So, what the hell do I mean when I insist that happiness begins within?

All those externals, as well as a million and one others, seem to make you happy. And indeed they are very pleasurable experiences. What they do, however is not make you happy, but help you tap into the vast reservoir of happiness that exists deep with in you. They are your pathways into the happiness that waits patiently and always for you to discover it.

So, please continue to do those things that make your heart sing. And even add more paths to happy to your repertoire. The more externals that lead you to an internal state of happiness, the better off you are.

But don't rely upon any of them exclusively. For when the friends aren't available for dinner, and the tennis courts are frozen over, and the sunset is covered by clouds, and the flea market offers up nothing but used DVD's and tube sox from China, where will you find happiness? Within. In your soul, in your heart of hearts, where it truly always resides.

Enjoy the world and all it has to offer! But remember that is the experience of life itself that is the real source of happiness.

Nothing Makes You Happy!

"This music makes me happy."

"The sunshine makes me happy."

" You make me so happy!"

We both hear and make statements like this all the time. And, with all due respect, none of them are true. Nothing, or no one, "makes" you happy.

You enjoy certain types of music, sunshine, and specific people. When you are in the presence of those stimuli you tap into your innate, internal happiness.

It's more than just semantics.

If someone or something can make you happy, then, the opposite is also true -- someone or something can make you sad, angry, or depressed. If you believe external stimuli control your emotions, and thus the quality of your life, you are at the mercy of whoever or whatever enters your life. You have given up your power.

People who believe that their emotional well being is controlled by externals spend an inordinate amount of time trying to find the ideal and the perfect. They are always searching for the jobs, homes, people, and experiences that will "make" them happy. Their search is fruitless and never ending.

The truth is, you are happy. Happiness is part and parcel of your very nature. You can enjoy the externals, be they people, places or things, but you can't count on them. They all crumble, fade die, or go away. As will you.

But until then, you can be happy, merely by tapping into the current of life. Be happy, don't chase happy. And happily dance to the music, bask in the sunshine, and love the one you're with.