What makes you happy?

I read about an experiment involving elementary school students who were asked to itemize a list of their wants. No one wrote that he or she wanted to be happy or more loving. Their wants were things and events. And the same was true when high school and college students were asked.

When the researchers followed up and asked why no one listed being happy or being loving, the students said they thought the items on their list would make them happy and bring them love.

But that is not how life works. When we tie our happiness to getting things, then if we lose them or don’t get them, we are unhappy. When we do this we are giving our power away.

Sometimes what we carry around is our own preconceived stuff and it gets in the way of our being happy.

For example, there was a guy from the Cascades who moved to Kansas. He built a big, beautiful house with a huge picture window overlooking hundreds of miles of open range. As he looked out the window, he complained, “There’s nothing out there to look at.”

About the same time, there was a man from Kansas who moved to the Cascades. He build a big, beautiful house with a huge picture window overlooking the mountains. He grumbled, “I can’t see anything because the mountains are in the way.”

Happiness is an inside job, a perspective. We choose happiness first, then allow the universe to bring us the things, the situations, the people that allow us to express our happiness.

A rabbi shared a story about someone asking him if they should save the best grapes till last when eating them. The rabbi told him to eat the best grapes first so as to always be eating the best grapes.

If we start enjoying the best we have now, then we will always be enjoying the best! We’ll stop postponing our happiness until later!

Maybe that is why I agree with this cartoon? After all, I don’t want to postpone my happiness! What happiness will YOU no longer postpone?