Stop Waiting and be happy now!

Have you convinced yourself that you can’t be happy until something in particular happens in your life? Maybe it’s getting that great job, landing a windfall, diving into that fantastic fairytale romance, or even shrinking a dress size. Maybe you’re obsessing about a relationship that has ended and can’t believe you could ever be happy again unless you get back together.

It’s really easy to fixate on something and think that you can’t be happy without it – but it’s just not true. In fact, if you’re holding off on happiness until something you want shows up, you could be missing out for no real reason. You might be absolutely amazed to discover that research by Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert shows that, following an understandable spike in their emotions immediately afterwards, a few months down the line people who had either won the lottery or lost the use of their limbs reported almost exactly the same level of happiness.

What makes us happy, according to Gilbert, is our ability to make the most of whatever situation we find ourselves in and to be happy with what we’ve got – and this seems to be something we are all equally capable of and quite naturally do to a great extent.

Hoping that you will be happy in the future is a bit of a strange thing to do because you will never get there. The past, present and future are all connected, but soon as you get to the future, it becomes the present! As Eckart Tolle points out in the Power of Now, this present moment is all you have. It is your point of power – and it is perfect and complete.

Look forward by all means, be happy and excited about what lies ahead, but if you find on reflection that you are living so far ahead in the future and tying how you might feel to what you hope will happen then that you’re missing out on the present, it might be time to stop and look around!
You can be happy right now and you don’t need anything for that to happen. On this site, you’ll find loads of tried and trusted tips on how you can feel happier or raise your vibration, just by changing the way that you think, tackling your beliefs or keeping a gratitude journal. Scans done on Buddhist Monks have shown that dedicated practice can literally rewire our brains for bliss.

So the next time you find yourself thinking ‘if only’, or ‘as soon as…’, you can change it to ‘the universe is for me and everything is working out in my favour’. Because really, it is.

Loads of love,
Michele x