It’s fine to have goals to get us motivated, but to not allow ourselves to be happy until….whatever….is making a vow to be unhappy! I touched on this on my last blog, but I wanted to reiterate because I know a lot of us end up missing out on prime opportunities to be joyful because we’ve made certain vows to ourselves to only be happy when certain criteria have been met.
So what happened to those people I mentioned? The guy did end up earning that “certain amount” a LONG time ago and makes probably 5-6 times more now, but has still refused to get married, though he has been with a few wonderful women. The woman who refused to buy herself new clothes is still pretty much wearing old, shabby clothes, and the last woman has been in relationships with several “Mr. Not-So-Rights”. Thankfully, for the most part, they have learned to be happy in their circumstance, and are still hopeful but no longer making their vows of happiness dependent on some outside force.
If you have made a vow to delay your happiness until a certain contingency is met, please do yourself (and everyone else around you) a favor and disavow yourself from that idea. Make yourself a reasonable goal, find reasonable ways to achieve that goal, and for goodness sake, just make a plan to find a way to be joyful every day.
If you're having a hard time "feeling" happy at any given moment, do what my cousins tell me their Dad (my Uncle) would tell them when they were acting grumpy when they were young. He'd take their little faces gently in his hands, get to their level and say quietly but firmly, "Be happy, NOW!!!" They knew that was their cue to stop complaining, put a smile on their faces (however reluctant) and pretend they were having a good time until the point when they were actually having a good time! Haha! I love that story!
-Tessa L. Charles
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