Happiness is something that many people crave every day and yet it often escapes them. Oftentimes, they have the feeling that happiness could be theirs if their circumstances were different. Have you ever felt this?
Very often we get caught up in what I call “if only”. If only my husband was nicer to me. If only I had a better job. If only the children were older and far from home. The list can go on and on.
We can waste a lot of our precious time dreaming about “if only”. So many people fall into this trap and end up being miserable for most of their lives.
The problem is, they want happiness to come to them in one way or another. Like it’s something you could own. When happiness comes, it seems so fleeting that it quickly disappears.
People mistakenly think that happiness is just a feeling like a passing fantasy. I am here to tell you that happiness is not a feeling, it can be a way of life. Happiness can be your everyday happiness if you just follow a few basic principles.
First of all, you have to live in the NOW. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow has not been promised to us, so you must be present in the present.
Second, you have to control your thinking and the thoughts going through your mind. Happiness can be called a state of mind and the path to happiness is to bring the mind to its proper state.
If I live in Texas and want to be in California, I have to change my state. To be in this state, I have to make some changes. In this analogy, we will decide to take a train. The train must go in the right direction and we will reach our destination. We have to know what train we are on, otherwise, we might end up where we don’t want to be.
Think of this train as your thoughts. That’s right, your line of thinking. If you don’t want to stay in Texas, you have to take the right train. If you let a train of thoughts enter your mind, they will transport you from one place to another and you will never reach the destination you want.
The question then is how to get on the right train?
The ticket to get on the right train is called gratitude. Gratitude is an attitude and when we look at what we need to be thankful for instead of dwelling on our problems, we will find that we too can be brought into the state we want to be in.
There is a path to happiness and that path is gratitude.
