Even with happiness coaches in the market, you still don’t need it. It’s the pursuit of it that is most stressful.

Misconceptions we carry:

We think we have this as a singular life purpose.

We have to strive to be happy all the time.

You could not be farther from the truth.

Our greatest leaps of growth have occurred in the darkest moments when finding the light within, actually brought us to ourselves.

Happiness can be overrated it considered an end goal. It’s about making the journey of this life an overall joyous one.

If our life was a reflection of our choices, would happiness be on top of that list of what people have created because they truly desired it? Nope.

We have moments of sadness, frustration, anger, guilt, shame, courage, helplessness, loneliness, and many other emotional states that are either simpler or more complex.

Happiness or joy is nothing but moments when our desires have been met.

We are a wonderful and delicious mixture of all of this and we are so ever-changing that the only thing I could think of was to say that we are and can be authentic, wholehearted, fully being ourselves. Get out of the pressure!

Some observations on the journey of the pursuit of happiness:

• There’s a strange fear that goes something like “what if I can never be happy” or “I am not meant to have happiness” or “I have to work so hard for it but it’s so elusive”
• You focus on people who are happy and wonder how they do that…I mean how can everything be so perfect? What’s missing here?
• Why is it so hard to get happy and then even harder to maintain it? Does it not feel like it’s the happiness you know? It seems more a struggle…
• The more you resist the natural states of anger, frustration, shame, guilt, regret, and other complex emotional states, the more they persist and happiness gets edged out.
• Just entertaining the thought “I am not happy” is enough to spiral down a rabbit hole. Something like “oh this relationship is so hard for me, why can’t so and so the person just be there for me forever” …it’s the forever word in that line that collapses the happiness deck of cards.
• An appearance of happiness can be annoying as one can sense it’s fakeness. It’s “trying too hard” and trying to keep up appearances is a trying process on your emotions.
• You want to be happy = You are not it now
• The pursuit of happiness = not present, it’s only in the future.
• You will be happy when you… = You will not allow it into your space right now.
• Your life’s purpose is happiness = You shall live in denial with all other emotional states.

So there we go. Split wide open.

Authenticity and truth as searing as they may be may burn a quick second, but won’t scar the way the pursuit of happiness will.

You are lost to the ego’s pursuit. And Ego does not know joy. That is the quality of the soul.

Love

Aditi Nirvaan