Happiness Is Not Selfish.

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Happiness is made to be shared.

The martyr ethic is built upon a number of erroneous and fearful beliefs about happiness, the major one being that happiness is selfish. Another great fear of happiness to the practicing martyr is that my happiness denies others their happiness. In other words, it appears to the martyr that there isn’t enough happiness to go around. Other fears of happiness for the martyr include: Happiness leads to conceit, my happiness has no value to others, and being happy is inconsiderate in a world where there is suffering.

The fear that happiness is selfish is not only untrue, it actually couldn’t be further from the truth. Psychology researchers find time and time again that it is the depressed people, and not the happy ones, who are intensely self-focused and self-absorbed. Happy people, by contrast, tend to be outgoing, sociable, generous, loving, and kind. They’re also more tolerant, forgiving, and less judgmental than people who are depressed….

In truth, your happiness is more than okay. Your happiness is also a great gift. It is a total inspiration, a wonderful example, and a great service to the world. Your happiness contributes so much more to the world than your suffering.

— Robert Holden, PhD, p. 114, 118

Fantasy

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Fantasy instead teaches us that there is something worthwhile you can do on the way to the grave: you can dream. And that maybe that dreaming is not only intrinsically valuable, for its own sake, but that sometimes the dream can take on a life of its own, a life that persists, and that shapes and sometimes even ennobles the lives of others that it touches, sometimes long after the original dreamer is gone from this earth.

— Gardner Dozois, Preface, Modern Classics of Fantasy

Roaming the World in Books

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It’s refreshing to roam the world — plunging into different countries, meeting new people and tasting their cuisine. If walking another step in your home leaves you less than inspired, sashay into a well-told story. The charms of being at home return after sampling new horizons. Books are an open invitation to another place and time. . . . Good books lead us to discover that it is not our house that binds us, but rather the dullness of our thoughts. Reading refreshes the mind and the imagination.

— Lisa Groen Braner, The Mother’s Book of Well-Being, p. 72

Directed Energy

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Living in confident expectation means using your energy most efficiently; it’s the way to live life by design rather than by default.  Direct your energy!  Remember, it doesn’t matter how much you want something.  Wanting is self-perpetuating — if that’s where your energy is focused, you’ll just get more wanting.

— Victoria Castle, The Trance of Scarcity, p. 121

Influence

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Think about the people who have most influenced you.  When I remember them I am always surprised to discover that these are people who did not try to influence me, who did not need my response.  Instead they radiated a certain inner freedom.  They made me aware that they were in touch with more than themselves.  They pointed to a reality greater than themselves from which and in whom their freedom grew.  This centeredness, this inner freedom, this spiritual independence had a mysterious contagiousness.

— Henri Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing, p. 75

Confident Expectation

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I encourage you to confidently expect, while not being attached to an outcome.  Expect it, but then let it go.  Yes, the money would be great, the job would be perfect, the relationship would be wonderful, but they in themselves are not what has value.  It’s what they provide that we are really interested in — the sense of security or freedom, the experience of happiness and belonging.  We can claim those states as our inner reality, with or without the associated tangibles.  It’s the essence behind the form that really matters to us.  And when we live in It Already Is, we are irresistible to the flow of abundance in the universe.

— Victoria Castle, The Trance of Scarcity, p. 120

Renewed Vision

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One of the most poisonous of all Satan’s whispers is simply, “Things will never change.”  That lie kills expectation, trapping our heart forever in the present.  To keep desire alive and flourishing, we must renew our vision for what lies ahead.  Things will not always be like this.  Jesus has promised to “make all things new.”  Eye has not seen, ear has not heard all that God has in store for his lovers, which does not mean “we have no clue so don’t even try to imagine,” but rather, you cannot outdream God.  Desire is kept alive by imagination, the antidote to resignation.  We will need imagination, which is to say, we will need hope.

Brent Curtis and John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance, p. 156