“Happiness begins with you. Not with your relationships,
your friends, or your job. but with you.”
~Mandy Hale
Your happiness, whether we want to believe it or not lies in no ones hands but our own. When we stop outsourcing our happiness from external places, outside of ourselves, in other people, in material things, in food, in a career, we begin to create room. This space allows our foundation of happiness to be built exclusively by ourselves, for ourselves. Once we create that internal happiness it creates a barrier to get ahead. You alone, are the sole creator of your happiness, your complete happiness.
As you think about your life, what are the factors that your happiness or unhappiness is currently built on?
Do you feel that ultimately have ownership over your happiness?
If we can learn to design this ownership and believe that we are the owners, we can build happiness from the bottom up. Of course, external sources, work temporarily: a good long talk with a friend, a great pasta meal with a significant other, a new dress, but these are temporary and more importantly everything will and does come back to ourselves.
Just like a personal trainer can teach you techniques and the proper way to work out, a professor can educate you on a topic, a financial advisor can tell you how to manage your money, It’s all on you. You are the one that has to work out, it’s you that has to show up take the course to pass the tests and it’s you that has to save to be able to put your money away. Take a good look in the mirror-that is who is going to make you the happiest.
If you are in debt, own it. If you are overweight, own it. If you have struggled to move past a difficult time in your life, own it. This doesn’t mean putting blame on yourself, there is a huge difference. This means, taking responsibility. Fully owning where you are at this very moment. Thankfully, the silver lining is although you may be the problem, you are the solution. The difference is what you do with that problem. Will you settle and become a victim or own it and change it? I once read somewhere that successful people put 5 percent energy on the problem and 95 percent on the solution. Think about it. If you put all your focus and attention on the fact that you are in debt instead of actually focusing on the solution of getting out of debt how far do you think you will come at resolving the issue? Probably not very far.
One of my favorite, incredible, believers in this idea is Tony Robbins. While I once watched a documentary on him, I will never forget one of the things he said. “I built this mother f*” And for those, who don’t know who Tony Robbins is, he is an author and life coach, amongst many other things. The more I let those words resonate with me. While it may seem such a simple acclaimed sentence, it is so true. When you stop and really think about it, we are the ones that “build” ourselves. Tony didn’t have it easy growing up, in fact, his home life growing up was said to be very difficult, at times he lived in an abusive household and at one point he was even working as a janitor. He didn’t play the victim card, he took ownership of his life and is now a bestselling author and travels all over the world transforming people’s lives.
We have the opportunity to wake up every day ready to live our best lives. It’s time to start taking full responsibility for your life. You are not a victim. You have the power and the time is NOW.