The Secret to Our Happiness is Within Us

First published on November 17, 2017

Oh no. I think they were right. I think maybe it is all inside. All of it. I think that in each of us - in us, not outside - lies the secret to our happiness.

I've heard them telling me, since I was young. And I didn't believe. I heard, but I didn't believe.

What if it's all here? What if there really is a gift in every moment? In every experience? What if that isn't a load of Zen crap?

Well, then the possibilities are endless.

Oh, I should have known. I should have known. My mother was part of a Buddhist organisation for almost as long as I can remember. My dad studied to become a dharma teacher, and exposed me to mindfulness long before it became the number one buzz word of the UK and America. And I didn't see it.

I don't blame myself. I just notice it.

Because something has changed for me recently. And it's one of those stories which I just didn't used to believe. I used to shake my head a little, smile, snort.

In September, I got a cold. I hate being ill. I hate that it restricts me. I hate that I'm not at my peak physical health. I hate that I can't do everything I want to do. But this time I decided to do something different. I’d been writing about decision and choice. And I thought, I wonder what happens if I decide to not hate being ill this time. And here’s what happened: being ill, it turns out, was fine. In fact, in telling this story to some of my clients and the people I was speaking to, I couldn’t help but laugh, and the laughter made me happy. And the illness didn't seem to last that long.

It turns out it wasn’t the illness that caused my suffering, it was me, resisting the illness.

A few weeks ago I was on a call as part of a Coaches Rising training course. There was a technical problem, and 20-30 people were stopped from getting onto the call. Jim Dethmer, the teacher, had been telling some kind of 'old fashioned zen story' about ‘What if what is happening now is perfect? What if each moment is perfect?’

But, as Joel, facilitating the call, shared the technical mistake he had made, and Iveta, a participant who had been unable to get on the call spoke, almost in tears at the injustice, Jim unpacked it with them, and what unfolded was a beautiful, vulnerable and affecting change in everyone on the call. How could it be true that anything could be a gift? Could be the perfect thing to be happening in this moment? Well, here was an impossible thing to be grateful for – a technical cock up which cost 20-30 people something they had paid for. But for everyone on the call, that cock up led to a perfect demonstration of how each moment is perfect. For Iveta, held off the call, something magic happened, too. Even as I write this I notice my own reticence to share it. I’m worried you won’t understand. But thanks to Jim’s practice, taught to us in that session, I can see that is just my own desire for control, for approval. What if this article is perfect, just the way it is?

What does this mean for me? It means I can sit, this Wednesday, as I got ill again, and thank the world for the gift of the illness, which took me to my bed and my fantasy novel. Well, not quite, but I can suffer so much less, and read my book, and be loved for who I am. And you know what? I was better yesterday. Almost completely recovered, within a 24 hours. What a gift.

I think they were right. I think they were right, all along. The secret to our happiness is within us. It is in our choices, it is in our awareness, it is available. 

And although it is within us, that doesn’t only affect what is inside. I heard Ellen Langer this week, talking about how acting younger actually made some people in her experiment appear younger. I have seen, first hand, how changing things inside can create incredible power outside, in the world.

And, as I sit in gratitude, as I reflect on this. I am filled with a tiny bit of ‘Oh no’. A tiny bit of, ‘I shouldn’t have been so skeptical.’ A tiny bit of ‘What could have happened if I knew this earlier – really knew it?’

But mostly I am filled with joy. Because I think this is coming, for all of us. And it is within our grasp.