I just want to be happy

I just want to be happy. Such a simple expression of desire and yet so many people find it hard to achieve.

Like so many others, I can recall a time when I wanted to be happy. Not deliriously excited or ecstatic but just happy. Not sad, miserable and depressed.

The times when life was less than pleasant and enjoyable I can still recall vividly. For me, a long sequence of events, some more significant and some less significant, had led me to end up in a place where happy was not a phrase that applied to me or my life.

Consumed by envy, greed, hate, fear, pain and unhappiness had become my default outlook and mood.

I had tried relationships, sport, drugs, spending, drinking and a myriad of other ways of changing the way I felt. The way I felt about myself. All had worked until they no longer did.

Ring any bells?

So what changed, you may ask.

For each reader who wants to be happy, there is no reason why they cannot achieve that happiness. There will be hurdles and barriers that have to be overcome. Abusive/toxic relationships or adverse childhood experiences. Poor education or low income. Criminal history or mental ill health. Poor body image or having been bullied. Being a bully or a predator. A gambler or a person who isolates. None of the people who exhibit the traits I have mentioned, or any others for that matter, are unable to overcome them and to thrive and prosper. To be happy!

Nowadays I have days when I am less happy but I would not change my worst day of happiness for my best day of unhappiness. You can achieve the same state of being, believe me. If this human being can, anyone can. Make the effort and the rewards will follow.

It would be nice, neat and easy if I could state one thing or one course of action that flicked the switch, that enabled me to move from unhappy to happy. Unfortunately, that was not the case and I suspect it is not the case for the majority of unhappy people.

What worked for me is something that I see working with multitudes of people. Clients, friends and acquaintances.

On a subconscious, then conscious and verbal level, I decided I no longer liked the way my way of living was causing me to feel. Then the action followed.

Not having a route map or a guide I had to figure out how to change for myself. I made lots of mistakes but I am able to see now how they were necessary lessons. 

I paid attention to my appearance - I shaved off the stubble and began to visit the barber regularly. Same with the dentist - painful but I still did it. Another thing I did was dress smartly - no longer wearing clothes until they fell apart.

So far these were only superficial things but they were things I could manage to do and they expressed a desire to change.

At about this time, I got into a 12-step recovery programme. Aaah, you might say, it was the drink and the drugs that made you unhappy. That would only be partially true though.

The recovery program meant going to meetings, lots of meetings. In the meetings, I met other people who were finding their way to a happier way of living. When you lay down with dogs you should not be surprised if you got up with fleas. By mixing with people who were striving to be positive in their outlook I was encouraged to try the same. I no longer kept the company of gloomy, negative and self-destructive people. 

Guess what?

I started to feel positive and hopeful - not gloomy, negative and despondent.

What I have described so far did not happen overnight. It took as long as was needed but it was working. I no longer felt worthless, miserable and useless. 

The thing I find puzzling is that I did not understand that being positive begat feeling positive. I am so glad that it did though.

So, some period of time later I realised how much I valued this newfound happiness and also how much I wanted to sustain it. I felt very scared as well. Scared because being happy was new to me. I feared that it would all come crashing down and that I was being a fool for even thinking it could be different, let alone trying to change it. The fear of the unknown (happy, positive and different way of being) can be so powerful that it causes us to stay in the known discomfort. I consider myself so fortunate to have been able to push through this fear.

 So I faced the fear and chose to go back to studying. What an experience. I studied counselling and that turned out to be a journey and a half. As well as being a voracious reader I was able to challenge and address the issues from the past that, unwittingly, were clouding my everyday life, my everything! 

That was not painless but was so worthwhile. The things that haunted me then hold no power now. 

Maslow, Rogers, Levine, Yalom, Assagioli, Winnicott, Bowlby, Dryden, Prouty, Finkel, Neizsche, D’Escarte, Porges, May, Rothschild, Fischer, Brown etc. all gave me a perspective that I hold dear today. I was and still am hungry for knowledge.

So I digressed somewhat there. The journey I described was my own personal journey from unhappiness to happiness but I hope it serves as an example of what each of us is capable of, if we want and if we try.

Just for today I will be happy - most folks are as happy as they make their minds up to be.

- Bill Wilson