What doesn’t work is the “I’ll be happy when x, y, or z happens (you can fill in what your x,y, or z is).

Even if getting what you want gives you some temporary happiness, it won’t last. And soon you’ll realize that it’s a feeling of success, not real happiness. There’s nothing wrong with success but it will leads to the desire for more success and thus the roller coaster ride begins.

“I’ll be happy when I lose 20 pounds”. What if you lose 18 pounds? Will that keep you from being happy?

“I’ll be happy when I get a raise.” When you get the raise how will that make you happy? Inevitably we spend more money when we make more money. Then what.

And so on. Not everyone behaves like my examples, but if the loss of some weight is all it takes to make someone happy, what does that say about your happiness?

I say again you can choose to be happy right now, no matter what you weigh or what your salary is.

Happiness is it elusive if you rely on external factors.

I was never happy and even more sad is that I wasn’t even searching because I figured things were as “good” as they were going to get and I had “no chance.”

But in the last 5 years happiness has shown up in my life in more ways than I could ever imagine. And that’s all from my work with IFS (internal family systems).

I had stopped looking for happiness and I started looking within (with IFS). And look what showed up. I am finally happy after 77 years