Divorce: The Recipe for Happiness

What are the ingredients for happiness? Have you ever heard people make comments like these or have you ever made these comments?

• If only I lost weight, I’d be happy.
• If only I had a significant other, I’d be happy.
• If only I looked younger, I’d be happy.
• If only I had more money, I’d be happy.

Have you kept track of the people who based their happiness on an “if only” and had the “if only” come true? I have and the outcome was not close to what they had hoped.

• She lost weight and wasn’t happy.
• She got married and wasn’t happy.
• She got a face lift and wasn’t happy.
• She got rich and wasn’t happy.

The reason is that true happiness comes from within. There is no magic happiness recipe that is uses “if only” as an ingredient. In order for you to achieve happiness, you need have the courage to own the person you are. The person you are is based on your life’s experiences and what you learned from them.

“There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, ‘Yes, I’ve got dreams, of course I’ve got dreams.’ Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it, and yep, they’re still there. These are great dreams, but they never even get out of the box. It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line, to hold them up and say, ‘How good or how bad am I?’ That’s where courage comes in.”

~Erma Bombeck