I’ve been thinking a lot about the pursuit of happiness and my journey in finding it. Up until 2 years ago, I couldn’t find TRUE happiness.  My life wasn’t working.  At that time, I came to the realization that it probably wasn’t everybody else’s fault that I was miserable.  I spent the next 6 months getting real with myself.  I was coached through a structured process and started a spiritual journey.  For the first time in my life, I spent a lot of time alone and in silence.  I came to the harsh reality that I had to take complete and total ownership of everything happening to me in my life – even the things that were coming from outside of me.  I learned that we control the quality of our life by how we perceive and think about events and information.  In other words, events that we experience and information that we receive are neutral.  The energy that we give them and our response to them create our quality of life – our reality. 

For instance, in my situation, for many years I saw the events of my childhood being bad, wrong and something I shouldn’t have experienced.  I had low energy around them and for many years, I felt like a victim. As a result, I felt unhappy and got upset every time I repeated or thought about this story. At this point, I had been repeating a story that no longer served me for 27 years.  It was time to change it… 

Instead of seeing the events as bad and wrong, I could simply rewrite the story, and have it sound something like this, I am grateful for the experiences of my childhood. I have determination, a strong work ethic and can easily fit in and connect with people of all social classes.  That feels much better than being stuck crying victim, and it is the truth! 

The past is simply a neutral chain of events, in which we create the story.  In order to experience true happiness and live the life of our dreams, we have to recognize the stories that no longer serve us – all of the stories of rejection, blame, lack and limitation.  Again, these stories stand in the way of us living the life we say we want. We can not change the events of our past, but we do have the power to change our perception of them to allow new realities.      

How could you rewrite your story in order to live a life of happiness?

Peace be with you!