do you know how to be happy?
Yesterday my daughter told me she only received a 95% grade for her flute scale homework, because “my teacher said I’m using the wrong fingering for the high notes! I didn’t know there was different finger placement for those!” She exasperated to me over the kitchen counter. This is her first band teacher who also plays flute, so I have heard many excited stories and hopes of learning more about the flute! This was her first tale of woe. She couldn’t believe she would be graded poorly for not doing something she had never been taught correctly before.
She wasn’t asking for coaching, so I just listened. I try to always be listening, because there is a lesson in every story and experience. So of course there was something to learn from this. As I sat in church the next two hours it hit me like a bolt of lightning, or maybe more like the fizzy bubbles in soda. This truth bubbled up- but before I tell you, I’m going to tell another story.
I received a text from a client last week: “Have you seen the movie Moonstruck?”
Uhhh, honey child that is one of MY FAVORITE movies! So of course we had a great convo about it, and she sent me the wolf scene and said, it hit me like a ton of bricks!
Long story short, Johnny was engaged and running a successful bakery business when he accidentally cut off his hand in the slicer. This led to his fiancee leaving him and sending him into a decade of woe and misery. Cher won an Oscar for her portrayal of Loretta, a sad widow who was engaged to Johnny’s brother. She pointed out that he cut off his hand like how a wolf in a trap will chew off their paw to get free.
For most of us, success, abundance and joy are NEW and DIFFICULT modes of BEING.
They could feel, and do feel, like a trap. Pure ease and joy can be literally suffering if it is NEW. Learning that most of us (ok 100% of us) sabotage our success to get back to what’s comfortable is not something most of us want to see. But in my experience, it is true.
The biggest obstacle to my success and expansion…is ME.
The truth, is what I texted back to my client:
“Most of us don’t know HOW TO BE HAPPY”.
But here’s the thing, most of us don’t know how to be happy, because it’s new! We haven’t been taught the proper way to allow and flow with the beauty and love of life. Sure, we get moments of ease and joy and success. But it’s short lived. Just like my daughter has been playing the high notes on her flute, but with improper finger placement, which probably doesn’t matter now, but will eventually impede her progress. So sure, for slow songs and beginner songs, she can play a high note. But the more difficult the songs get, the more difficult it will be to hit the high notes quickly and KEEP PLAYING them effortlessly.
The world has taught us to be happy and successful is only gained through GAIN, and WORK and material success. Sure, this may work short term, but not permanently because it isn’t true. A loving life is achieved through surrendering our stories, forgiving ourselves and loving God and life.
Sometimes we need people teaching us things that we didn’t even know were a “thing”. My daughter thought she had the right fingering for her flute scales before. And voila! here is new information!
And here is some new information for you:
Most of us DON”T know that we don’t know how to be happy.
But here’s the thing: We’ve never SEEN it been done before for long periods of time or effortlessly. We haven’t seen people be HAPPY just because they are ALIVE. We’ve only witnessed people “being” happy because life is “being” good to them.
““If you want to be happy, you have to let go of the part of you… that thinks there’s a reason not to be happy. You have to transcend the personal, and as you do, you will naturally awaken to the higher aspects of your being. In the end, enjoying life’s experiences is the only rational thing to do. You’re sitting on a planet spinning around in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Go ahead, take a look at reality. You’re floating in empty space in a universe that goes on forever. If you have to be here, at least be happy and enjoy the experience. You’re going to die anyway. Things are going to happen anyway. Why shouldn’t you be happy? You gain nothing by being bothered by life’s events. It doesn’t change the world; you just suffer. There’s always going to be something that can bother you, if you let it.””
Is it possible that we could really be happy, successful and at ease in THIS life without suffering? Could we be constantly expanding and enjoying the journey of expansion (which means growing pains and learning trials) without complaining?
Most of need to learn how to support our body to feel safe and happy. Most of us need to learn how to question our thoughts and judgements with love and acceptance instead of fear, uncertainty and doubt. Most of us need to learn how to see we make choices from fear, and how we make choices from love, and how to freely choose without guilt or shame.
This is all so very new to the majority of us, which makes it seem and feel to hard or too difficult.
Replace the words ‘hard’ and ‘difficult’ with “new” and see how it fits.
It’s just so hard to forgive others and myself.
Is it? Or is it just NEW?
It’s hard to be happy and at ease without worrying!
Is it? Or is it just NEW?
To our body and mind, anything NEW seems difficult.
Anything familiar seems easy and safe.
But here’s the thing, getting verbally abused and physically beat up could feel easy and safe if that’s what you are used to.
Whereas receiving compliments and success could feel difficult and scary.
It just depends on what is familiar and what is NEW.
You get to choose.
You get to choose.
You get to choose.
You always have.
You always will.
You have agency to choose.
We just haven’t learned, and it is all new. So of course it will feel difficult and scary. But I promise, you won’t get a bad grade from God, because you haven’t learned it right yet, this loving life and others thing (and yourself), and you won’t get a bad grade from him even if you HAVE learned and still make mistakes.
You are always getting a 100%, it’s just you yourself realizing that, and being willing to learn new things that you didn’t know that you didn’t know!