The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance:
The wise grows it under his feet.
— JAMES OPPENHEIM
A number of years ago I found my work overwhelming, and I decided to take a sabbatical from my business. At the time I was being coached by a gifted intuitive counselor who supported me to slow down and take better care of myself.
A month into my sabbatical, I found myself still working at tasks I had planned to stop doing. A habit-driven voice inside me urged, You must finish these projects and communications before you can relax. As a result I found myself still chained to my desk and computer, feeling more frustrated than ever.
Around that time I had a session with my counselor. I told her, “I still feel overwhelmed with endless tasks.”
She replied pointedly, “Have you ever thought about taking a sabbatical?
Bam! Right between the eyes. My counselor knew full well that I was supposed to be on a sabbatical. She was rubbing in the fact that I had not done what I intended to do. While her comment irritated me, it prodded me powerfully: If you are going to take care of yourself, the only time to do it is now. No excuses.
Motivated by her guidance, I pulled myself away from my self-created obligations and began to travel, spend time in nature, and enjoy my relationship with my partner. The remainder of the sabbatical was truly a sabbatical—but only when I chose it to be so.
Contentment never comes in the future, because the future is never here. Contentment comes only when you choose it now. If your good is always waiting for you around the corner, it will always be around the corner. If, however, you are willing to let your good be here now, you will find it here now, and when you come around the corner, you will find it here now again.
What you seek may already be in your hands, but you must look in your hands to find it. Happiness is like a winning lottery ticket. Having the ticket is not enough. If you intend to collect your earnings, you must go to the lottery office and say, “Here is my ticket. I want my money.” Likewise, you must go to the universal lottery office and say, “Here is my birthright. I want my peace.”
Tigers and Strawberries
A man was walking through a jungle when two tigers began to chase him. He ran to the edge of a cliff and began to shimmy down a vine into a canyon. As he approached the valley floor, he found two more tigers waiting for him. He looked up and saw a pair of mice gnawing at the vine on which he was suspended. Just then he noticed some succulent strawberries growing out of a nook on the side of the cliff. He reached out, plucked a handful, and ate them, smiling as he savored the sweetest strawberries he had ever tasted.
Sometimes it seems that there are tigers behind us, ahead of us, and all around us. Trouble appears to threaten at every turn, and prospects for escape seem dim. Yet if you shift your gaze from the apparent threat, you might find some delicious strawberries. When you make up your mind to stay in strawberry consciousness, you will rise above tiger consciousness, and strawberries will become the dominant theme of your reality.
My friend Victoria owned a gift shop that was often pilfered by shoplifters in her small town. One day she was robbed by two teenage boys who lifted more than $3,000 worth of merchandise. At that point Victoria grew frantic; it was easy to overlook a $5 ring, but now she had lost merchandise she hadn’t even paid for.
Victoria called the police, who knew the boys—they were already on house arrest. She went to the house with the police, and the teenagers denied the theft. As Victoria looked into the eyes of one of the boys, she saw that his soul was aching. Compassion filled her heart, and she understood that these young men were calling for help. The robbery had occurred for a purpose deeper than appearances would indicate.
Victoria informed the district attorney that she wanted to raise money to enable these boys to attend the Landmark Forum, a transformational program. The DA agreed to support her even though the boys were incarcerated. Six more teenagers who wanted to participate in the program came forth, and Victoria phoned everyone she knew and spoke at her church in an attempt to raise money for the program. She collected more than $3,000 in a short period of time. A gracious woman offered her San Francisco home for a weekend seminar for eight teens and four adults, where significant shifts in attitude and behavior occurred.
Using that experience as a platform, Victoria founded a nonprofit organization through which many teenagers’ lives were uplifted. Now she reports that she is grateful she was robbed; the experienced changed her life, along with those of many others. In the midst of tigers, she plucked the strawberries and ultimately fed the tigers as well as herself.
What They Serve in Heaven
The places where we seek fulfillment are often not where true fulfillment lives. The world tells us that stuff, power, and prestige will bring us joy; the more people you boss, the more important you are. Yet real joy is found in connection. The mind fragments, while the heart joins.
When Dee and I lived in Fiji, we frequented a restaurant called Oasis in the small town of Pacific Harbour. We dined there not just for the tasty food, but because we savored our connection with a native Fijian waitress named Litia. The night we met Litia, we felt as if we were reunited with a dear friend. She welcomed us with a huge smile, touched us as she seated us, called us “darling,” and took impeccable care of us. At the time, Dee and I were considering purchasing a property in the area, and we decided to go ahead, in part because we so enjoyed the warmth of the Fijian people typified by Litia.
Over the years our relationship with Litia deepened, and our appreciation for her grew. She was kind and generous with all the patrons, and made the weariest travelers feel at home. On numerous occasions we observed tourists from more prosperous countries become demanding, rude, and even insulting toward Litia. They were fussy about special orders and substitutions, impatient for their meal, and treated her like a peon. In all cases Litia maintained her poise and returned their rudeness with extreme kindness.
I was stunned by the juxtaposition of power and peace in these encounters. Here were wealthy travelers who had the means to afford expensive vacations, obviously used to having “subservients” snap to their orders. Before them was a humble woman living in one of the poorest countries in the world, who earned a minimal salary (no tips) and used all of her income to help her children. Yet she was far happier than the well-to-do tourists. Through those interactions I learned that happiness has nothing to do with worldly power and everything to do with inner light. This modest waitress was far closer to heaven than those making demands of her.
Litia consistently demonstrated that inner peace is the greatest power. All the prestige in the world does not light the universe as brightly as the glow of a sincere heart.
Beyond Surviving … into Thriving
My friend Tony went through cancer treatment and emerged healthy. He told me that he does not attend a cancer-survivor support group. He attends a group for thrivers. “There is more to life than simply surviving,” Tony told me. “I am here to shine.”
There is a huge difference between surviving and thriving. When I think of surviving, I think of the television series Survivor, in which individuals with separate interests are pitted against each other, competing to see who will triumph over the losers. It is a primal mentality, and a scanty substitute for real happiness.
Thriving, on the other hand, conjures far more empowering images. I think of the school that Oprah Winfrey established in Africa so children can gain skills for a healthy, rewarding, productive life. I think of companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, eBay, Netflix, and Groupon coming up with clever, colorful, and creative ways to enhance modern commerce, communication, and entertainment. I think of theaters filled with patrons enjoying concerts, plays, movies, lectures, and gatherings that stimulate our higher senses and bring us laughter, music, dance, and wisdom.
The Eastern system of chakras, or energy centers in the body, reflects a profoundly designed ladder of well-being. The first chakra, located at the base of the spine, is concerned only with survival needs. At the top of the head the seventh chakra mediates our oneness with the universe and finds fulfillment in our spiritual nature. While all of the chakras are functioning all the time, we decide which rung of the ladder we choose to stand upon. The journey from the lower chakras to the higher ones is the map of human evolution.
The glory of God is humanity fully alive.
— St. Irenaeus
Although most people in our culture have everything we need to survive, and we are fully capable of dwelling in a state of self-actualization, for some odd reason we tend to gravitate toward struggling at a survival level. Yet, like my friend Tony, you can refuse to settle for an identity as a survivor and instead see yourself as a thriver. You may already be sitting at the top of the pyramid of life, but missing the view. In the Old Testament (Genesis 13:14), God told Abram (later Abraham), “Now lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward.” The instruction was more metaphorical than literal: Raise your vision from the small and demeaning to the expansive and celebratory. There is a far greater world available to you than the one you have been living in.
Happiness Envy
In the film Broadcast News, a neophyte reporter who is intensely happy asks a veteran newsman what to do when your real life exceeds your dreams. The elder tells the fellow to just keep it to himself.
The oddest effect of happiness is that other people are often annoyed by it. Misery does love company, so a joyful person poses a threat to those steeped in sorrow. This is so for a couple of reasons:
— First, people who perceive a reward for being lost, sick, alone, poor, or victimized have an investment in their reality. When someone comes along who challenges that reality, teeth are bared in an effort to get rid of the intruder bringing sunshine to a rainy but familiar perceived safe domain.
— Second, observing a happy person stimulates the psychodynamic of envy. If I want something but haven’t been able to get it, and I see that you have it, your success reminds me of what I am missing. So you become the bad guy for underscoring my pain. One way I can level the playing field is to try to tear you down so we are both groveling.
If these responses to happiness sound sick, irrational, foolish, immature, and self-destructive, they are. But hey, the ego has never been known for its kindness and love to self and others. Shining the spotlight on its trickery is the beginning of loosening its hold and replacing it with thoughts, feelings, and actions that truly serve.
When you choose contentment, happiness, or any other form of positive self-expression, you are likely to encounter people who mistrust, challenge, criticize, and ridicule you. I remember walking into an office, smiling. Upon seeing me, the secretary snarled, “And what the hell are you so happy about?”
What do you do with people who can’t handle your happiness? Don’t let them steal it from you. Hold your space and remember that well-being is far more natural than resistance to it. Don’t take the negativity of others personally, don’t argue with them, don’t try to prove anything, and don’t flaunt your glee. Just live it. Regard their envy as a compliment, an indication that your light is obvious. While others may try to tear you down, they do not have the power to do so unless you give it to them. You are connected to a Higher Power, and they are disconnected. Although they realize it not, your peace is a gift to them. On some level you are inspiring them. Later they will join you.
You spot it, you got it.
— Source unknown
If you feel envious of someone who is happier than you are, reframe the experience in your favor. Everyone you observe is a reflection of your own consciousness. If you are aware of the happiness or success of others, something inside you is already a match to their state of being. They are mirroring an element of yourself that is emerging. It is only a matter of time, perhaps a short time, until the good you observe in their lives will become your own. Appreciate such people as role models and harbingers of the success that you deserve and will manifest.
The world is a smorgasbord of possible realities, and you get to live in the one defined by the vision you choose. All vision is selective. Every encounter, experience, and event is testimony to the vision you are putting into service.
We see more with our minds than with our eyes. If the mind is steeped in judgments and shrouded by fear, the world it shows us bears little resemblance to what life could be if we let it. We must retrain our vision to see with the inner spiritual eye.
When do you get to enjoy your life? Now, if you choose it.
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.
What is essential is invisible to the eye.
— ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY, FROM THE LITTLE PRINCE