They sometimes seem to be at odds with one another, don’t they?
So let’s look at two facts that will keep you on course even when you feel like you’re anything but.
1) What keeps us unhappy? The belief that there is something currently missing in your life ”“ that you need ”“ in order to be happy. We get what we want in life and then ask ourselves, “Is this it?” Or we get the dream job (or lover or house or vacation) and then wonder, “What’s next?” Or we get what we’ve been wanting for so long and then realize maybe it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
The nature of desire has us constantly desiring (but can also wreak havoc by leaving us constantly unsatisfied). This can be healthy if it propels us into searching for more meaning or meeting our challenges or working on ourselves. It can also be damaging and, ultimately, a futile and neurotic pursuit if we constantly push our happiness down the road to some future event. It won’t come that way.
Well, for sure, the event may come. But the happiness we were expecting along with it doesn’t.
Happiness simply doesn’t abide in an event, person, thing, job, money, cars, fame, success, location, or title. It’s not out there. It’s not outside of us. It’s an inside job. It’s a choice. It’s an expression of our being. It’s our essence. It’s who we already are. Complete and whole without needing anyone or anything else to make us feel good.
The way into a happy life is to change these stubborn paradigms that support our incorrect belief that we will be “happy when”¦.” Everything you will ever need is inside you right now. Your job is to go there first, and then everything else is just icing on the cake.
2) That there is any way into Hollywood. There is no way in. There’s only your way.
Comedian Aziz Ansari says, “You have to make your own way. No one would have given me a show like Master of None. It definitely would have gone to some white guy.”
We are constantly inundated with formulas, steps, plans, rules, stories, “secrets”, and tools we are told we must have to be pretty, successful, rich, happy, famous and liked.
Do you know what the secret is? Be yourself.
First off, what else do you have? If you can’t trust that who you are is unique and interesting and has something to contribute and give to the world ”“ then what are you actually going to give to the world once you’ve “made it”?
We listen to the “experts” and start believing we have to change who we are before we can get any of the things we want. We also believe that the absolutes that most people throw around, “You can’t do it like that,” “That’s never going to work,” “You’re too fill-in- the-blank,” “That’s impossible,” “That’s not what people are looking for right now,” are the final chapter and must be true, simply because someone says they are.
We live in a world of infinite possibility. Anyone who speaks in absolutes is either A) a terrible scientist or B) not telling you the truth. In the words of the late, great Muhammad Ali, “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”