Do you ever compare where you are now in your life
to where others are, or to where you thought you should be by this time? If you
do, and don’t feel happy as a result, the comments here may help.
I have a friend who, when she set up a social site
page and began to reconnect with long-lost friends, learned who was doing what
now. She shared with me that temporary depression settled upon her, as she
compared her life to the lives of some she connected with. I say “temporary”
because she eventually realigned her true feelings about this. My friend is, in
the main, happy in her life and has good reason to be.
Back in the day, others saw her as a leader, a
person going places in her life. The reality is a health condition started
nearly two decades ago and altered that predicted-by-others path for her. She
felt she’d let everyone down because she wasn’t in a high-powered position or
owned her own company, or whatever else she and they may have expected and as
some of her friends experience.
We never know a person’s complete story, despite
what their successes, or what seems to be lack of successes, appear to be. And
sometimes, even when we know what’s not working in their lives, we still dwell on
something they do have that we feel we lack. As for my friend, the muse later
paid her a visit and she’s created an enterprise that connects donated used
musical instruments with students who want to play an instrument but can’t
afford one. This has energized her and her life in major ways, as well as
benefits many others in the process. This is what she was meant to do and when she was meant to do it. But,
everything had to line up for this moment, including her inner vibration and
energy.
"The reason we struggle with insecurity is because
we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else's highlight reel."
Steve Furtick
Comparing ourselves to others has a not-so-funny
way of making us forget to what measure we’re actually happy with where and who
we are. No one lives a life without challenges or feeling a range of emotions;
but we are often generally happier or more content, for the most part, than we
recognize or our ego aspect allows us to recognize. Things changed for my
friend when she became peaceful and happy with who she was and where she was in
her life. That state of mind and being opened a door that was ready to be
opened in her life.
As I thought about what I wanted to say to my
friend, before she had her inner shift, an image came to mind and I share it
with you here. Imagine you enter a magnificent hall. There is a table in the
middle of the room and you walk up to it. There is only one thing on the table:
a beautifully bound book with your name engraved on the cover. You open the
book to the first page and find this written on it: Please answer this question in order to choose one of the following two
options, and know that whichever one you choose will design the map of your
life. Question: Do you choose to do and be what makes others happy and win
their approval or do you choose to do and be what makes you happy and
fulfilled?
I imagined posing these options to a child of age
four. It seems easy to imagine a child choosing to be happy — because the child
wouldn’t have a clue what the first option might take to succeed at it, but is,
likely, darn sure she or he knows what “happy” is. As adults, and if we’re
honest about it, we’ve learned how exhausting the first option can be; yet, we
may still feel conflicted about choosing the second option because we’re
indoctrinated by our families and every element of society to go for the first
one.
“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that
happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I
wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t
understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” ― John Lennon
In my image, the page with that question appears
periodically in the book so we can revisit this choice at different life stages
in our life. However, it isn’t beyond imagination that this page appears in our
life book whenever we think it’s time to consider our options again, especially
when we feel we aren’t living an authentic life and, possibly, aren’t even sure
what that means to us after years of disregarding it. It also appears at the
end of certain chapters (and beginnings of new ones) in our life.
The pain of inner discontent drives us to seek
external balms and remedies, to seek instant gratifications, which are usually
just bandages covering emotional bruises or wounds that influence our authenticity
and responsibilities to ourselves and our life. But these externals and the pursuit
of or craving for them does not address what begs for nourishment inside of us.
Whatever word(s) we use — secure, prosperous, successful, loved, and so on — we,
ultimately, want to feel good, feel in harmony, about who we are. We’ve become confused about how we can arrive there after
years of asking ourselves what others expect of us so we’re accepted and
approved of, instead of what we want, need, and require for ourselves, our
well-being, and our joy.
I recently read, “There are many types of success
and they aren’t all about getting ahead.” To be consumed with external,
tangible success, completely or more so than with inner, intangible success,
smacks of “I’ll be happy when” thinking, feeling, and behaving. That kind of
thinking, feeling, and behaving ignores present-moment happiness, which is a
form of self-abuse practiced far too often by far too many of us. This is
because it’s a program that was downloaded into us long ago, one that needs
replacement with a better one.
We forget to count our successes that no one can
measure but us, because we’re conditioned to focus on how others think we measure up. If we remembered to genuinely
appreciate all our successes often, we’d feel a great deal happier, content,
and fulfilled. We can also look at any area of our life we feel needs a
positive shift and ask, “What can I do that I will do to allow me to do better
than this?” It doesn’t have to be huge, just effective. Don’t talk about it; start where you are, and do
something different or differently.
So, the question is: Do you choose to do and be
what makes others happy and win their approval or do you choose to do and be
what makes you happy? Like the four-year-old child, are you clear about what
that overall feeling, as opposed to
appearances, means to you? Maybe it’s
time to ask yourself this and see what you learn. And, it’s okay to do this
each day and especially at crossroad moments in your life. It’s a good
practice, one you’ll appreciate.
Practice makes progress.
© Joyce Shafer
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