By Sharon L. Demarte, M.A.
Recently I realized I am happy! I have found happiness! Oh, I have a couple of challenging life situations going on at the moment, but my overall state is that of happiness. I write this in a state of awe that I have actually gotten to this place and excitement to share with you what I have learned.
All of my life I’ve struggled and strived to find that elusive quality called happiness, only to have it continually evade my grasp. What is so amazing to me is that I didn’t find it in any of the ways the world prescribes.
Basically the world encourages us to buy more stuff, go faster, and do more, with the promise that we will become happy. Fancy cars, big houses, luxurious vacations, a beautiful wardrobe; all of these and more are supposed to make us happy. Many of us believe these messages and we spend our precious lives striving and struggling after these things only to become disillusioned, disappointed and burned out.
Does buying more make us happy? It may give us short-term pleasure, but not lasting happiness. If anything, buying more makes us less happy. We have spent our money, which cost us valuable life energy to earn, on an item that we now have to spend even more life energy to take care of. On top of that, buying can become addictive. Just like any addiction, we just keep wanting more. Look at what happens when you buy one new thing for your house? It makes everything else look dingy, so you want to buy more new things.
Does going faster make us happy? Our culture puts a high value on multitasking. Look at job ads. We are seen as more valuable if we are fast and can do a lot of things at once. We may get an adrenaline rush out of going faster, but there’s a high price to be paid if we make this a way of life. We live with high levels of stress and we are missing out on being fully present to our precious gift of life.
Does doing more things make us happy? Have you ever heard of “doing happy”? No, because we are human beings not human doings. The more “doing” things we pack into our lives, the less we enjoy each thing we do. When we have too much to do, we become overwhelmed. We rush from one thing to the next striving to accomplish it all. When we do too many things for too long, we need a vacation — to escape our too busy lives.
None of those things made me happy, so I quit doing all of them. I set out to downsize my life — to clear all of the clutter out of it. Instead of adding things to my life, I started subtracting things. Instead of rushing, I slowed way down. Instead of doing more things, I started doing fewer things more thoroughly. I started setting my intention to love and enjoy every moment of life. I started attending to simplifying, ordering, conserving, counting my blessings, blessing others, creating beauty, living in the present and most important of all, listening to and following my inner guidance, which for me is God. I let go of all goals except one, that of inner peace. I let go of “to do” lists. I will occasionally write myself a reminder note to do something, but I no longer have to do lists.
I set higher standards and stronger boundaries for my life. Boundaries are the limits we set on other’s behavior when they’re around us. Standards are the limits we put on our own behavior.
I made the following commitments to myself:
- I don’t do stress anymore.
- I never rush at anything.
- I don’t bring anything into my life that I don’t absolutely love.
- I don’t create any more pain in my life.
- I spend my time with people who enhance rather than drain my energy.
- I take the time I need to make wise choices.
- I never work harder than those I’m trying to help.
- I say “no” a lot more often than I say “yes”.
- To be happy rather than right.
- To tell the truth to myself and others.
- I do only those things that make me feel good about myself.
Most of the ways I live my life now are opposite to the way I used to live. As I have simplified, downsized, and ordered my life, I have connected with happiness. It’s been there all the time; I just didn’t know it. It was covered over with all the clutter (busyness, stress, past issues, future worries, too much stuff, etc.)
What is happiness anyway? What I have discovered is that happiness = love, joy and peace. These three things lie beneath every one of our goals. Love, joy and peace are what we’re all searching for, even if we don’t realize it. And the amazing thing is that we already have them. Love, joy and peace are out natural state. We can access them by eliminating everything that covers them up. Love, joy and peace are found in an uncluttered life. Clutter is anything and everything that takes you out of your natural state of happiness, anything and everything that robs you of love, joy and peace.
Try an experiment. Take one of your goals, any goal. Maybe it’s a better job, a bigger house, a new car or financial independence. It doesn’t matter which goal you pick; just pick one. Now sit down with pen and pencil and ask yourself, “If I had that (your goal), what would I have?” Write down what comes up for you. Don’t stop there; ask the same question of the answer you received. Like peeling an onion, keep asking the question until you get to the core. You will know you are at the core when no more answers come. You will have discovered what’s really important to you. What is it? Will the goal you started with bring you what’s really important to you? If not, what will?
If you are looking outside yourself for happiness, you won’t find it. It’s inside you just waiting to be uncovered. If it’s too frightening to uncover it all at once, try removing just a few items at a time and take a peek. You could start by just eliminating a few tolerations (things you are putting up with). If you would like a sample of 500 tolerations, write to me and I’ll send it to you.
Like most everything in life, eliminating clutter (remember that’s anything and everything that robs you of your natural state of love, peace and joy) is a process. It takes time and work and it’s worth it! You will not have to wait until it’s complete to reap the rewards. You will start feeling the difference very quickly. Once you start feeling the rewards, you will be motivated to continue the process. With each step along the way, you will notice your life feeling lighter, freer and happier. If you choose to take on this process, a tool that I find priceless is the Clean Sweep Program from Coach University. Please see the Resources section for more information on this wonderful program and how you can get it.
I wish you Love, Joy and Peace!
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