The unlucky list of broken dreams

Life isn’t always going to match up to our expectations. . .

This article is for anyone who has a mental list of things that haven’t quite gone to plan, or aren’t quite the way you want them.  There might only be one broken dream on the list, but if it’s a burden you are carrying around with you day to day – aware of the life circumstance that isn’t quite the way you want it to be, then I’m writing to you.

I’m writing to you to let you in on a secret.  To let you in on a secret that will take you from being someone who has an unlucky list – a broken dream – to someone who feels like the luckiest person in the world.  Even the very fact that you are reading this article is down to pure luck!  You didn’t look for it.  It just popped up in front of you and seemed interesting.

So let me set the tone.  If you’ve got an unlucky list of any length, that means that you aren’t entirely happy with your external circumstances.  You’ve sought to get happiness from the outside world and it hasn’t worked.  Correct?  The secret is that it doesn’t work.  Seeking happiness from things, people, circumstances is a look in the wrong direction.  We may experience temporary happiness when we stop looking for it momentarily when the thing, person or circumstance we thought we needed shows up.  But it’s only ever temporary.

Why is it temporary?  We’ll soon notice something else we don’t have or compare ourselves unfavourably in some way, so the feeling of dissatisfaction, or being unlucky, will return.  Or, because deep down we can sense the impermanence of whatever it is, we will start to fear losing it. But the truth is that we don’t need anything, in particular, to be happy.  Happiness is our default state.  It’s only when we look in the wrong direction for it that we don’t experience it.  Instead, we experience lack, bad luck, resistance and suffering.

Reading this article you are in the lucky few who are becoming aware of this.  You are one of the lucky ones.  You can stop seeking happiness from things on your list, and start looking for it where it actually is.  You have it already.  You are happiness.  When you take away the limitations – the ideas we are conditioned to believe that we need, we take away the angst of not having them.  What remains?  Happiness.