Once I had a conversation with a young woman in her early thirties. Successful in her job, smart, bright and thriving. At some point, I asked her what it is that's she wants in life. She replied “Oh, I just want to be happy!” and so I asked her what she thinks is keeping her from being 100% fulfilled and happy just right now, and she went on to tell me about the small and big things that are missing in her life, goals not reached and successes not attained yet, but if so, then she will be happy.

You see the “innocent mistake” here? I have perceived this state of mind in myself and fellow humans over and over again, and it doesn’t stop to amaze me: the IF-THENs. “IF this and this goal is achieved, succeeded, reached, THEN I will be happy.”

Not right now, I will be happy, but only THEN. That's exactly how you successfully keep yourself from being happy. Because you don’t live THEN, you are only alive right now. You only live in THIS very moment, the moment you are reading these lines on the screen. Thinking about the future is just that: “thinking about the future”, it is not real, not really happening. It is this kind of IF-THEN-THINKING that keeps humans from actually BEING in the moment, from being truly alive. We don’t live in our heads, in our thoughts and emotions. But we do live with a physical experience, a body and mind, in the moment, that we can perceive through our five senses. This happens only in the NOW.

Happiness is not something outside of you, something that you GET or EARN or GAIN or even RECEIVE in the future or that you lost in the past. It is present right now. It is happening right now. It's rather something that is already with you, inside you all the time and when you realize that, you might want to cry and you might ask yourself:

“How in the world did I miss something that was so close and never ever separated from me all the time?”

#lifecoach #lifecoaching #happiness #goals #zen #mindfulness #slowdown #success