True happiness exists only in the moment.

True happiness only exists in the NOW.

(There is no future — only a series of “NOWs,” so delaying your happiness is an illogical, irrational thing to do.)

True happiness is always available to you, and the price is FOCUS.

 

Are you willing to focus?

(That’s the only catch here.)

 

If your answer is YES, true happiness is the simple, inevitable result of consciously directing your thought in a wanted direction.

And you can do this easily. You do it all the time already.

But you’ll have to let go of some well-worn patterns of where you focus.

 

Specifically, when you are truly happy, you’ll let go of your caring, your concern, your habit of protecting yourself from the conditions around you.

The conditions, like the weather, are always changing. Some days the weather will be great. Some days the weather will be lousy. These are just the temporary conditions and when you’re truly happy, you’ve already decided that you’re just going to get outside and play, no matter the weather.

• When you are truly happy, you won’t really care all that much about money.

The big tendency with money is to make money responsible for your happiness. To think, “well if I only had that money, then I’d be happy,” and in doing so, you delay your true happiness. When you’re truly happy, money is just a detail of life and not something you’re giving a whole lot of thought to. In the happiest moments of your life, you’re not thinking about money.

• When you are truly happy, you won’t care much about climate change (or whatever the “right” issue to get behind is).

When you are truly happy, you won’t care much about politics — the kind in Washington D.C. that cares about with Democrats and Republicans, the kind about what the “right food” is to eat, the kind about “the right way to educate and raise children”, and so on.

• When you are truly happy, you won’t really be tuned into the next national tragedy or disaster in the headlines.

When you are truly happy, you’ll begin to notice how all of those topics are interesting, yes. They exist around you, sure. And they could maybe someday affect you in a negative way sometime down the line. But right NOW, in this moment, when you are truly happy, you begin to notice that these things are not really relevant to your life.

In fact, you begin to notice that tuning into them at all is OPTIONAL.

And the more you live this way, the more you see these sorts of subjects move to the periphery.

When you’re truly happy, you’re now living on a very different wavelength, so now, in order to connect to such things, you’d have to swim against the current to reach them.

You can, sure. But why would you?

• When you are truly happy, the only thing that’s relevant is your happiness.

Now, you can certainly use your free will to make these issues relevant, to focus on the conditions of the world that you find to be problematic, of course. But when you do so, you’re letting the conditions dictate how you feel. And you’ll notice that focusing on these conditions does not feel good.

Can’t do that and be truly happy.

Not in the only moment that exists, NOW.

Does all this sound selfish?

Well, it is.

True happiness is an inherently selfish act, meaning YOU, your SELF, is the only one responsible for your happiness. You’re the only one that can do a damn thing about your happiness through the power of your focus.

And when you are choosing to focus on being truly happy NOW, you will be living on a totally different wavelength than all your worries, fears, concerns about the future.

You cannot be truly happy and be seeing the world as wrong or full of problems. 

Putting your stock in the conditions around you, and waiting for those things (e.g., Congress, “the economy”, your spouse or child, the climate, your body, your bank account, etc…) to change before you allow yourself to be happy?

That is a fool’s errand.

Deep down you know this to be true.

Really, the only question that remains — the only one that ever matters —  is, Are you ready to take responsibility for your focus NOW, are you willing to allow yourself to start having what you really want NOW, are you really willing to be truly happy, NOW?

Yes?

Cool.

Done.