from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love

“I keep remembering one of my Guru’s teachings about happiness.  She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you’re fortunate enough.  But that’s not how happiness works.  Happiness is the consequence of personal effort.  You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it.  You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings.  And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.  If you don’t, you will leak away your innate contentment.  It’s easy enough to pray when you’re in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.”

Tonight I am swimming upward into happiness.  I’ve been treading water for a time, caught in the trap of trying to satisfy a more conventional idea of success?  worth?  value?  I found myself in a frenzy of activity persuing, I’ll admit it, the almighty dollar.  I see now that I was persuing the puny dollar. 

Enough of that nonsense. 

Scribbled on a random page in my daytimer is a note I must have jotted down to ponder later or to pass on to my coaching clients:  “Use everything you’ve got to make a difference in the world.”  I know that what I’ve got to make a difference in the world is directly linked to my happiness – when I’m happy, I make a difference.  And when I’m making a difference, I’m happy.

So, what have you got?

Posted: January 13th, 2010 under On a more personal note, life coaching.
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