You can’t be happy all the time

It is difficult to feel enduring happiness by being attached to the physical world says DESPINA NICOLA

To explain happiness, let’s picture life as the ocean.

Life comes in waves and every emotional wave is temporary. If we take the waves of happiness, they rise and fall, rolling in from the ocean and breaking on the coast, gifting us with a sense of joy and excitement.

The emotion of anger is like the waves crashing hard against the rocks. While calm feelings are a low, gentle tide, grief is like a riptide that cuts the ocean and crushes you.

I’m Despina Nicola and I am a life coach. This article will focus on happiness; that feeling that we strive for.

People generally chase an elusive idea of happiness. I would even go as far as to say that most of us are addicted to quick fixes of elation. Yet, by the law of nature, being on a permanent high is not realistic.

Examples of what gives us quick highs are comfort food, the oxytocin in sex, adrenaline-charged gambling, drugs and other addictions. Absurdly enough, constructive activities such as getting a promotion, longing for praise and prestige can also be grouped under the category of temporary happiness. However, you may quickly sink to a low when you have accomplished them, leaving you with a hollow feeling that will never be filled by worldly possessions.

The world rewards you with a feeling of exhilaration when you accomplish your goal and obtain more material goods, but if you want happiness that endures, you will have to turn from the outside world to the inside.

Even though happiness will not be as appealing as the rapid highs you get from the outside world, by journeying deep into yourself you connect to spirit. Then pursuing the virtues of the spirit, our highest self is accessible.

When you uncover the spiritual world inside of you, you feel at home. You can tell because you feel overcome by an unwavering calm. You let go of control and surrender, letting all tension and stress dissipate.

It is in our inside world where we can appreciate who we really are. As Pythagoras said, “Man know thyself; then thou shalt know the universe and God”.

However, going deep within and finding the waves of happiness is much harder than you think. The more attached we are to the world, the more we crave quick fixes. It is difficult to feel enduring happiness by being attached to the physical world.

Real happiness is that which arises from your inner world. No external circumstances can lead to it, but only by identifying with your life source which is unwavering. Our life source embodies our truest and greatest strengths which is to live with integrity and virtue.

However, getting access to your life source is not easy. It requires being vulnerable to admit and own your faults. It requires humility to admit that you are imperfect. You are just another person trying to figure things out and making inevitable mistakes along the way.

In the spiritual world you can unveil your pain. In the presence of the spirit, darkness cannot exist. As Martin Luther King Jr said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”

This exercise can help you.  

Go over events that caused you grief and point out the painful conclusions you drew from them.

Ask yourself if the conclusions you have come to are true. Then ask one more time.

Do I have evidence about it?

If you do not, drop it.

Try to see the other person’s reasons for acting that way.

Trust the answer to the problem will come to you.

Accept what is and embrace the lessons. Work around your factual circumstances.

Happiness is a choice. By choosing to surf on the thrilling wave from chasing quick highs, we must acknowledge that it can only exist in tides. The water flood is always followed by drought and this constant chase and loss causes anxiety. Long term happiness, however, can gift us with a constant low flow that will keep rolling in and constantly fill our lives with meaning.