Friends, checking in with yourself right now, are you allowing yourself to be happy? To really enjoy your life?
Or are you perpetually stressed about something? Your work? Money? Marriage? Or some other challenging circumstance in your life?
One way that I’ve unconsciously prevented myself from sustaining states of happiness (which I just became conscious of) is that my life experience has created a belief that it’s only a matter of time before something goes wrong.
So, rather than being deeply rooted in a state of happiness, I’m constantly on edge anticipating the next adversity I’ll face.
This perpetual way of being started for me in 1999. At that time I was living what felt like a dream, with a fulfilling career, a loving girlfriend, and a supportive family. Just when life felt too good to be true, my car was hit by a drunk driver, I broke 11 bones, and was told I would never walk again.
Then it happened again in 2008. I had rebuilt my life, I’d just bought my first house, was engaged, my business was thriving and again felt like my life was a dream come true.
Then the economy crashed. I lost over half of my income, the bank foreclosed on my house, I had to move back home with my dad and got deeply depressed.
And I became jaded. I lost trust in the goodness of life. I figured if my optimism let me down before, it could let me down again. So I’d better always be on edge, ready for life to come crashing down again.
And it did. Eight years later, in 2016, when life was arguably the best it had ever been—The Miracle Morning was taking off, I was living my dream of traveling around the world and giving speeches, married with two kids—I was diagnosed with cancer.
I was expecting it. Not necessarily cancer, but I had been living in a perpetual state of worry that it was only a matter of time before something bad would happen.
Can you relate to this? Never allowing yourself to be fully happy because something is bound to go wrong?
So what’s the solution?
It’s actually simple. Every day, take a deep breath… and remind yourself that you deserve to be happy and to enjoy your life as much as any other person on earth.
