If You’re Struggling To Find Happiness, Read This

Nowadays, we’re so conditioned to believe that happiness is a mere destination to get to and not a state of being that you feel in the moment.

We chase happiness, one day hoping to find it. Yet we’re always on the pursuit of it. Always on the hunt for it. And the truth is, many of us go about our entire lives never truly realizing it until it’s too late.

We tie our happiness to a goal, the amount of likes we get on our Instagram selfies, or even to a person. But in reality, the moment we are often so desperately trying to capture is the very moment that will bring us the joy we’re so desperately trying to search for.

In a world that constantly seeks validation from others, constantly using other people’s metrics to judge our own self-worth, we need to ask ourselves the all-important question: Why?

Why do we choose to live this way?

Why do we choose to be chained by the comparison of others?

Why do we allow ourselves to be burdened by the opinions of others?

Why do we choose to be unhappy when we can choose otherwise?

Why do we search for happiness when we have it within us already?

All it takes is one moment to decide otherwise. To choose differently.

We get so caught up in chasing our goals and aspirations that we forget that achieving the goal itself will never make us feel whole. Rather, we have to feel whole right now as we’re working towards the goal. Otherwise, we never will be.

We get so caught up in the amount of likes we get on our Instagram selfies that we forget the reason we posted the picture in the first place. Not because we need others to tell us we’re beautiful or amazing, but rather because we wanted to share a beautiful scene, a memory and a moment that takes our breath away.

We get so caught up in chasing that person that one we so often deem “the one” that we invariably push them farther away from us. We put them on a pedestal, and in doing so, place our metric of happiness on whether or not that person accepts you, all the while forgetting that you don’t need anything outside of yourself to tell you that you are amazing. And when you see yourself as someone that’s deserving of happiness, that is whole, that doesn’t need validation from others, that other person will see it too.

If you’re struggling with happiness, you are not alone. But also know that happiness isn’t nearly as far or as elusive as you may think it is. Rather, it’s been with you this entire time. All you need to do now is see it as such.

Count your blessings, surround yourself with only the best people and things in life that bring you joy, and realize that perhaps happiness is just being who you really are in this moment now. It’s being confident in your own skin, expressing what you believe to be your truth and living life as your own, not from the judgment of others alone.

Happiness is real. Pain does end. Suffering does have its deadline. True happiness is forgetting about all the things that you should and need to be and instead being exactly as you are.