Where Does Our Happiness Come From?

Posted on October 23, 2015 by Jack Perry Jr, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.

We often go through life looking externally for the source of our happiness. We consider our life, its disappointments, relationships that went wrong, the feeling that life is beyond our control, and continue to search for happiness thinking it is out there somewhere. The search for happiness becomes a lifelong quest similar to finding the Holy Grail, and just as unattainable. Every time we fail we feel defeated, angry, or assume we are unworthy of attaining the happiness we so desperately seek.

Throughout our search we may blame our past, traumatic life events, or point fingers at others as the source of our unhappiness. When we feel trapped within our lives, or even stagnant, we look to outside factors as the very cause of the unhappiness we feel. It’s either our spouse, our parents, the economy, or the need to work a job you hate that are the source of this dissatisfaction. As time goes on and the search yields no results, we come to believe that happiness belongs only to the fictional characters we learn about in fairy tales or in movies. This only then manifests into the assumption that happiness is only a myth and cannot be attained.

The search for the ever-elusive feeling is not a pointless unachievable quest. Like any quest, knowing where the search begins is the key to its success. When we look to outside factors to provide us the happiness we yearn for, we have started the quest with the wrong treasure map in hand. Happiness and the feeling of living a satisfying life can only be found within ourselves.

This is not to say that we should cruelly blame ourselves for our unhappiness, as this is not the case. The issue lies with not having honed our self-awareness. Taking responsibility for our own actions is an important part of this process, but it is perhaps even more important to realize what we, ourselves, are responsible for, and what is beyond our control. The ability to accept ourselves for our faults, to release stored up negativity from things we had no control over from our past, and to understand that only we can make ourselves happy is the first step.

We are in control of our present. By taking ownership and being responsible for our own happiness, we become more self-aware. We are better able to identify what we can control and what we can’t. We become the cultivators of our own happiness. We plant the seeds of our happiness when we recognize the good in our lives. We eliminate the weeds that threaten to take over by eliminating negative influences we can control.

We water and fertilize our sprouts of happiness when we accept that some things in life are beyond our control and that we need to work hard to change the things we can affect. We make sure we provide plenty of sunshine by remembering to do things that make us happy and to take care of ourselves to the best of our ability. We harvest the fruits of our effort, the happiness we grow for ourselves and enjoy those moments to the fullest when they do happen. Happiness is not a quest for the elusive Holy Grail, it’s a garden.