All you see in your world is the outcome of your idea about it.

— Neale Donald Walsch

I think it’s very interesting that so many of us have to struggle to be happy.  I don’t mean that our lives are so horrible that we can’t be happy; rather, I am referring to the problem we have recognizing how wonderful our lives are.

You’ve probably experienced this phenomenon if you’ve ever been given a raise at work.  While any “normal” raise has some impact when we receive it, research shows that it takes only a couple of higher pay periods before we’ve absorbed the new money into our spending habits and no longer feel the economic effect.  And its effect on our happiness is short-lived at best.

Recently, one of the books I’ve been listening to is The Snowball: Warren Buffet and the Business of Life. I find it fascinating because in so many ways Buffet is just like us.  His life contains a mixture of the good and the bad.  The major difference between Buffet and the rest of us is that he “doesn’t have to worry about money.”  I put that in quotes because despite being worth BILLIONS, Buffet worries about money in his own way.  He obsesses about maintaining the performance of his portfolio despite the fact that he doesn’t need any more money – not to survive.  And when it’s all put together, Warren Buffet is probably no happier than you or I on an average day.

Where Does Happiness Come From?

Happiness or unhappiness is the result of how we view the world.  In Happy for No Reason: 7 Steps to Being Happy by Marci Shimoff and Carol Kline, they report the results that they found when they interviewed the Happy 100.  The difference between these 100 people and the rest of us wasn’t that life was kinder to them, it was their beliefs about life.  They had three key beliefs:

• The universe is out to support them.
• There is a gift or a lesson in every adversity.
• What is appreciated, appreciates.

Some of us have a hard time accepting these three beliefs.  I know that I sometimes do.  But I also learned another valuable lesson from the Happy 100: the key is in the story we tell ourselves.

Wayne Dyer writes and speaks about this a lot.  He gives the example of the person who came to one of his seminars, listened to what he said and then came up to talk to him.  She explained that he was wrong.  He didn’t really understand… because she couldn’t ride a bicycle.  Her mother had never let her ride a bicycle, so she couldn’t ride one now.

Dyer was incredulous.  How could a rule from her youth be stopping her from riding a bicycle 15 years later?  Well, she’d never learned.  So, LEARN NOW!  She was adamant.  It was her story and she was very attached to it.  It was her thoughts.  Dyer was equally as adamant, she could change her story any time she chose.

We Are NOT Our Stories

We all have our stories.  Unfortunately, they’re often fiction.  The trouble is if we think that they’re our biography and they become self-fulfilling prophesies.  Things happen.  Our brains try to create coherence from what may be unrelated events.  And that’s the beginning of the story – true or false.  In the end, we get caught up in our own stories.  When our mind tells us something, we believe it, like it’s divine revelation.  That makes it fact and we all know you can’t change the facts.

You know my story.  I’ve got a long commute and a stressful new job and no time to get anything done.  Those are my facts.  Or are they?  Actually, I manage to write at least one post/week, working up to two/week.  I still watch the stock market.  I’m not really trading right now but I plan to as I get my life more under control.  The problem is that the facts as I relate them hold me back from improving my situation.  How?  I keep telling my brain that same story.  I reiterate the “facts” while all the time gradually learning how to balance what I thought couldn’t be balanced.

Maybe you and I can change the facts… or at least we can change how we tie them together to create our story.  What story are you telling yourself and the world?  What is your story doing for you?  Does it make you happy or sad?  Are you the victor or the victim?  Which do you want to be?  You know what I’ll say next… IT’S YOUR CHOICE!