The eternal quest for happiness

The people we meet in our consultations often say that they are unhappy, that their lives have no meaning, that they feel useless, exploited and empty.
If this defines unhappiness, what is the definition of its opposite, happiness?
The answer is simple and follows directly from their complaints: finding meaning in what they do, feeling useful, free and having a feeling of being «fulfilled».

Let’s start with the latter: many people focus on what they lack, their ’emptiness’. Without doubt, this state of lack is a feeling that comes from childhood: at some point in our development, we lacked something. It could be attention, tenderness, esteem, or recognition. What matters is not whether we received it or not, but how we experienced this situation as a small child. It may have created an emptiness inside us that we continue to carry throughout our lives and that we cannot fill from the outside.

Here’s a little remedy: try to fill it from the inside with gratitude! Gratitude for the gifts that life has given you: your family, security, a roof over your head, friends, enough to eat and drink, and so on. If you put your focus on lack, you’ll attract lack. Try to focus on the abundance and the abundance will come to you, because we create our reality through our inner perception.

This automatically leads to inner freedom. Those who feel filled with gratitude feel free, which allows them to turn to the third aspect of happiness: feeling useful. Free to support others, to commit to our society and our values, to give love to our family. You are free as long as you do this out of gratitude for life’s gifts and not out of expectation that the other person will give it back to you.

And finally, it all creates meaning. I take pleasure in enjoying life’s gifts and sharing them with those around me. In this way I can develop a healthy egoism that consists of doing what fills me with meaning. Again, the natural consequence is that I leave my self-centredness behind and turn to sharing freely with those around me ... who will naturally return the favour a hundredfold. And there you have it!
All it takes is a tiny bit of gratitude!