Some people say that the pursuit of happiness is trivial, self indulgent and self-serving. I don’t know what experiences those people have had, but in my experience I see that when people are happy, they are much more loving, supportive, and available to themselves and to those around them, however most reasonable people might say that, dealing with poverty, sickness, war, global warming and the woes of the world, should all take priority over a personal concern for individual happiness.

The implication is that happiness, as some people claim, is not only self serving but limited and therefore not worthy of consideration. How sad that schools do not offer classes on “how to be happy” instead we’re taught to think that we are responsible for all of the problems brought about in our own life and the lives of others.

Is it any wonder that we get stressed with all the pressures real and imagined starting to take medications to calm us down, cheer us up, give us energy, help us to sleep…… sometimes abusing those very things that we wanted to help us. Well why not ……..we feel that we have the weight of the world on our shoulders………. or so it seems.!!

So often we strive to change the world around us by changing others. We focus on external solutions to problems which can appear so overwhelming and complex that any reasonable hope of success seems remote. “What can I do?” we ask ourselves in despair. “I’m just one person.” The simple answer is that we can only change ourselves.

The irony is that for us individually and for the planet collectively there perhaps is no issue more pressing than personal happiness. To be happy – and all that happy implies- comfortable, loving, accepting, nonjudgmental, joyful, at peace with oneself, might in fact be the most pertinent prescription for dealing with what most of us are concerned with on a global, communal and personal level.

If just one person changes, becomes happier, touches another with a more loving, peaceful and generous hand, then the world has indeed, become a more loving and peaceful place. This has an effect on the world like a stone being thrown into the middle of a pond, its ripples spread throughout the water. Our capacity to change enables us to make a truly profound difference in the world.

Try it next time your angry, with your child, lover or spouse. Put your pride to one side and say a loving or empathetic word instead of an angry one, you’ll be amazed at the difference!

Acceptance is the pathway to happiness. We can’t change what isn’t ours to change.
We Are the Difference.