Hey Guys- People who are happy know that their happiness does not depend on external factors, but internal ones. They know that if they are not happy in a small town, they wont be happy in a big one until they resolve whatever inside is making then unhappy. As weve talked about before, they know that unhappy single people become unhappy married people. They know that if they have not found their passion and meaning, no future job can give it to them. They know that if they cannot be intimate in their current relationship, they would repeat the same pattern in another one. They know that more money will not make then happy and will not fill the emptiness in their life. So, they do not give in to fantasy and move somewhere in a search of a new life. Instead, they get healthy. They make an internal life change, not an external one. They own that even if they move, even if they get rich, even if they get married... they will still need to work on their issues. Now, it is absolutely true that you might have to move to find a place that has the resources to work on your life or the industry to help you find a job. Or it may be that having a little more money might enable you to invest in the passion you have discovered. Certainly we live in a relationship with an external world. I am not in any way saying that the city where you live or the person you marry or the job you have or your financial situation do not affect life. Of course the outside matters, and I hope you find the best of all those categories. Here is what Im saying: Successful people - in all of those categories - know that only as they get healthy will they thrive and find the external life they desire. They know that trying to move forward without aligning the internal is folly. Said another way: If I hate my life, moving my same life to another building is not going to help. I remember a struggling college fraternity brother saying before Christmas break that he was going to Colorado to find himself. When we all got back in January, we asked him how his trip to find himself went. He said, I went to Colorado to find myself, but I wasnt there. We all cracked up laughing, as did he, but the principle was shouting out: Wherever you go, there you are. Whatever you own, you are still the same person. Whoever you are with, you are still you. Wherever you work, you are still the same person. There is a story about a man who moves to a new town to start a new life. He pulls into a gas station where an old man is managing the store. He walks up to the old man and says, So I am just moving here. What are the people like around here? What were they like in the last place you lived? the old man says. They were ok, I guess. The old man looks at him and wisely says, Well, thats probably how youll find the people here. How true. People who see others as good and trustworthy and who establish good relationships tend to do that wherever they go. Those who think the people in their current location are no good tend to expect that in their new place people will be nice. But because they see through the same lens, after a while, the people in the new place dont look nice at all. These people fail to see that their way of seeing determines a lot of what they find. Something on the inside makes them see all people as basically untrustworthy, no matter where they are. If you dont believe me, watch a political talk show with a Republican and a Democrat talking about someone in office. They will see the exact same behavior in totally opposite ways - all because of their inside bias. One will say, What an idiot for doing that, and the other will say, Best president we have had in decades. What we see is often in the eyes of the beholder. Its all on the inside. Cheers, Henry *Pages 189-191 from my book Never Go Back
Posted on: Tue, 08 Jul 2014 17:21:43 +0000