Can you keep a secret? I mean, can you keep a really, really important secret? If you can, then you have a big head start on keeping yourself happy.
Tragedies of many "sizes" happen all the time. Events occur that are way beyond your control. What do you do to keep yourself going?
Steve came through the door of my office looking as though he had been run over by a pickup truck and left for dead. He was literally dirty, clothes torn, blood dripping from his left nostril.
"What happened to you?" was all I could manage.
"I just got mugged up town on my way to see you. That's way it been going these last several weeks," Steve said. (Not his real name.) "My life is a wreck. I messed up and my wife left me and took the kids. I was laid off my job after 17 years. My mother died two weeks ago. Father was already gone. My house is about to be foreclosed. I am just not happy."
Pardon me, but I almost laughed when he said, "I am just not happy." I managed to stifle the laughter, however. Steve didn't say that to be funny. He said it because it summed up his entire life at that moment.
We went to the restroom across from my office and got the bleeding stopped and his face washed. Then back to my office so we could talk. He told me the usual tale of how he had been raised to believe if he just had the right stuff, the correct job, lived in the proper neighborhood, drove this certain car, he would be happy. Instead, all these, plus his family, were gone in a few weeks time.
I said, "I'll teach you a secret. It won't cure your problems, but it will help you deal with them. Can you keep a secret?" I am sure this sounded much too light for him, but he was game for anything at that point.
I told him happiness resided on his inside, not his outside. I said to him that I was not making light of his circumstances, but the secret was he could be happy even in the midst of great discomfort or tragedy if he remembered this secret and applied it in every circumstance.
"You have seen, unfortunately, first had, that depending on outward situations does not bring happiness," I said. "You need to develop an inward space, a hiding place, if you will, where your happiness is locked away. Then nothing can finally destroy you."
I told him all he had to do to have and keep this secret was to decide it was so. Decide that at the Core of the Universe, and therefore his own core, there was deep, profound and everlasting Harmony that nothing could disturb or demolish. He needed to latch onto that Harmony by being in touch with It daily. Taking just a few minutes a day to deeply concentrate on being happy on the inside. That he needed to see this happiness radiating out to "cover" all contingencies.
Is there such a place within each of us? Oh, yes. Make no mistake, we are hardwired to the Core of Harmony of the Universe.
So, I told Steve, the world can be falling apart around us, yet we can remain cocooned in our happiness. Not as a means of permanent escape from the substantial world. But as a place of retreat where we can refresh our spirits and regain our strength for the fray. Steve left a little bit better off than when he appeared dirty and bleeding. As I heard from him over the weeks to come, he was feeling much better about himself and his world.
You, too, can feel much better when you develop and maintain this secret place of happiness within you. It takes just a few minutes each day to retreat to this site of refuge, to reequip yourself for whatever is happening in your physical world. Does it cure problems? No. But it surely helps you deal with them. Decide now, right now, that you have this secret of happiness within you.
And I invite you to claim your Free Instant Access to a Force-Source-Resource where you will find more about inward happiness. Just Click Here. There are several to choose from. One is titled, "Two Life Phrases for Self Development 'I Am My True Self' and 'I Am Conscious'" Remember, one bit of information can give you a lifetime of satisfaction. You'll get that info here.
My blog: http://themeaningoflifewithdrbob.com/blog where we talk about the meaning of life, which is to be happy.
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