Happiness is an Inside Job

Image by ashley rose, via Flickr

How can we be happier persons?

One of the issues we all face during our lives is our dissatisfaction level. Some of us seem to be able to be happy pretty much regardless of our circumstances. Others of us have a hard time being happy even when everything seems to be going well. Why does this happen? What can we do about it?

Happiness is an inside job. When we enter a relationship as a person who is already happy and fulfilled in their lives, we bring ourselves as a gift to the relationship. When we come to a relationship with the expectation that our partner will be the one to make us happy, we are setting ourselves up for failure. No one person outside of us can fulfill us or make us a happy person. That is a task that each of us has to do for themselves.

When we enter into a relationship with our partner with the expectation that they will fulfill us, or make us feel happy when we are not, we are doomed to disappointment. If we are unhappy to begin with, eventually we will become unhappy again if we are not working on ourselves to change that dynamic. When that happens, we may blame our partner for our unhappiness rather than taking it upon ourselves to better our situation. Too many times we may leave the relationship once we feel unhappy, looking for a different partner to fix our happiness level. We will repeat this pattern over and over again, leaving relationship after relationship looking for the one who will finally make us feel fulfilled, when all along it was our responsibility to fulfill ourselves.

We want to bring ourselves as a gift to our relationship with something of value to add to that living dynamic entity. We do not want to be an albatross around our partners neck dragging them down with us into our pool of unhappiness. To that end we work on our recovery. We use our tools in our daily lives to help us overcome our issues and increase our self esteem. In this way we give ourselves the gift of happiness.