I caught up with a friend from the coaching world. We hadn't spoken for a while, it was hard to believe it'd been almost two years! After some light conversations about what we've been up to, we exchanged about happiness, success, productivity and retirement. It was interesting to be reminded of the trap we all fall into when chasing these things. How romantic it can feel to pursue such states, and of course how numb we all get to what's really going on.
"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate" - Carl Jung
My friend mentioned that whether he is happy or not has never been a concern. He never focused on achieving happiness, nor was he interested in pursuing it. It's a nice adventure, but pursuing it presupposes that we do not currently have it now. In a similar way, if we are focused on chasing success, our subconscious focuses on the idea that we are not successful now.
Your perception of success and happiness may not be the same as mine, but the psychology applies. How are you keeping out what you want, simply by pursuing it?
I had a friend I once visited in Bali. She'd been building her life, network, and coaching business over there for a number of months and she finally decided that she wanted to stay long-term. I witnessed her in her accomodation hunt - move after move after move, I'd lost count. Her list of requirements (to be happy/ at peace / relieved) grew longer and longer.
When I returned to Australia and she was still in Bali, we called and she exclaimed with a soul-exhausted voice, "I just want to be happy Jules". I can hear tears swelling up in her eyes. I knew how challenging her journey had been - and she is without a doubt the most awesome dream go-getter I know. Yet this also translated to her ability to make things difficult for herself that she couldn't see. She was making happy hard.
Of course we all have our non-negotiables in life. To an extent these will serve us. But when do we start treating them as rules that keep happy out, instead of guidelines which allows happy in? If there is one way to make it easier that I have found, it is spending as much - as much - time as you can getting to know yourself. Get to know yourself deep, so well that no one else could ever know you better than you.
When you do this, I promise you will start getting to know really well all the ways you keep out what you want.
Changing our minds
There is a quote by Rumi that helped to shift my world from the inside out.
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
―
Whether it's love, success, happiness or peace, there are only barriers we have created within ourselves to prevent us from having it. In other words love, happiness and peace are our natural state. It is our role and our mission to come back to it.
Love,
Jules
