The Key to Happiness

Written by Lisa Frost
Absurdly Improbable

14th May 2007

www.absurdlyimprobable.com

Life, reality, is not a tangible thing. We come into this world fresh and ready to learn, and in some ways what we're taught builds some reason out of the strangeness around us. In other ways it blinds us from so much of what is.

We come into this world with the key to living a joyous life firmly implanted in us. Then we put it in a safe place, forget all about it for some decades, and then when we finally decide we want it we can't remember what it was or where we put it, so spend much of our life searching for it!

First we mistakenly believe that the key is out in the world somewhere - in other people, jobs, money, hobbies, religion... you name it, we look for the key to happiness in it.

Then one day it eventually dawns on us that the key to happiness is within us, not outside of us, and so we begin an extensive search of ourselves. We look at our character and passions. We search fervently for our purpose. We work at becoming "better" human beings. We use substantial energy focussing on being positive. We give to others. We give to ourself. We look at the good in each situation. We show gratitude for what we have. We show courage. We persist. We act. We attempt to focus on what we want and banish the thoughts of what we don't want.

At each step we believe we have found the key, and we feel happy. And truly, what we discover about ourselves is beneficial to our growth, and does in fact make us happier...at least for a time. But then one day something comes along and that happiness is shaken and sometimes breaks, and we wonder why. And so we keep on searching for that elusive key that we knew so well when we stepped into this world and have now forgotten. We read more books, go to more seminars, get more therapy, and find out more about what it is to be a success, to be happy, to live the life of your dreams.

I've been searching as much as anyone, and what I've come to believe is that what most people describe as the attributes of the truly whole person - the person that is living the life they want, the person with the unshakeable attitude of happiness and positivity, the person that is a success - are really by-products of having and using the key.

I believe that every wonderful, positive attribute that we all strive to have and be comes from first using the key, and that what we are actually doing in trying to be positive, persistent, courageous etc without the key is similar to building a house without first laying the foundation: we may get the walls up, we may even get the roof on, but as soon as a strong wind comes through our house gets shaky. When a storm hits it falls down completely.

True happiness is unshakeable - take a look at the Dalai Lama and you'll know what I mean. It doesn't mean that the truly happy never experience negative emotions, but it does mean that they experience and use them in the way they were designed: to learn from, grow from, and then release.

So what is the key? What is it that forms the foundation that true happiness is built on? I believe that the key lies in a single word: FAITH.

I believe that the key to true happiness, the key to life, is having complete faith in yourself and the universe (or God, or whatever name you would like to give).

So what exactly is faith?

To me faith is having complete belief in who you are. It's trusting yourself completely and implicitly - trusting your judgement, instincts and intuition and acting according that. It's accepting yourself as you are, including the mistakes you make as you learn and grow, and your imperfections. No one is perfect, and it's something we should be thankful for - what a boring world we'd live in if we were all perfect! It's often our imperfections, the areas that we personally view as a lack, that lend us beauty, warmth and humanity. Faith is accepting and loving our imperfections, both great and small, and rejoicing in them. It's believing that we are worthy and deserving of receiving anything and everything that we dream of, just for being who we are. It's about being true to the person that we are, and of being proud of that.

It's also trusting that the universe will provide the best of what you ask for, if only you let it. It's believing that what you truly want will be provided, regardless of how unlikely it seems. It's accepting that it can be provided in a completely different way to what you ever expected, so when things don't appear to be going according to your plan, it's having faith that it's still going according to a greater plan, and a greater good, if you just keep having faith.

True faith in yourself exists regardless of whether anyone else shows faith in you. It holds its head up when the world is trying to push it down. It persists and succeeds when anything else would fail. It smiles when everything else would cry. If you look at any truly happy person, any truly successful person, you will see that the one thing they all have in common is true faith in themselves and the universe.

So if complete faith is the key to true happiness, then what is the key to complete faith?

Well that's something I'll be looking at in more detail in a future article. In the meantime go and have a look in the most powerful emotion we have: LOVE.

Written by Lisa Frost
Absurdly Improbable
www.absurdlyimprobable.com