Pursuing happiness is as effective as chasing a rainbow

Attempting to pursue happiness is as effective as attempting to discover the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. The harder you try to find happiness, the more you pursue it, the further out of your reach it will become. Happiness is never something you pursue; it is something you choose to enjoy, because of internal feelings of contentment and meaning. It is a state of mind, you can choose to invite into your experience at any time. If you allow your happiness to depend on factors outside of your control or things in your environment, over which you have little or no control, any small change in your circumstances or in your environment, will result in changes to your state over which you have no control.

I am sure that enjoying a delicious ice cream will make you happy. The challenge though, is when you allow that ice cream to be the catalyst for your happiness. What happens if someone, accidentally knocks the ice cream out of your hand? Do you immediately change your state, from happy to angry? If you are outward looking for your happiness, it will be fleeting and temporary. The art of enjoying positive feelings or sustainable happiness, which is not dependent on any extraneous factors, is to find meaning and ways of inviting fulfillment into your experience.

When you invite meaning and fulfillment into your life, you will have discovered a way of feeling happy and content, despite any changes in your circumstances or any small mishaps, which may occur. A life of meaning, where you have a deep sense of purpose and value, will most certainly never change, because someone knocks an ice cream out of your hand. When you have meaning and you have invited fulfillment into your life, you are living in a state of joy and happiness, which is not dependent on purely fleeting emotions.

Action Idea: Start to explore your environment and try discovering areas where you can find meaning and fulfillment.

• Try to discover ways of developing deep meaningful connected relationships with people around you
• Look for a cause larger than you, which you can support.
• Make a contribution to others, with no expectation of receiving anything in return.
• Look for and discover all the wonders, which are in your life right now and feel real gratitude for them.
• Commit to a life of on-going learning and growth, as you grow and become more, you will invite far more meaning and fulfillment into your experience..

Try to bring one or all of these factors into your experience, you will be amazed at how they will contribute to your feeling of contentment and bring meaning into your experience. The most wonderful side effect of working to bring any of these concepts, I have described above, into your experience, is that as wonderful as it is to cross the finish line in each case. The journey, which you must travel to invite this level of meaning and fulfillment into your experience is almost magical.

One of the easiest ways to immediately change your state and to begin your journey towards meaning and fulfillment is to explore your life and find all the wonders in your life, for which you are grateful. When you take the focus off you and place it on all the positive things you have in your life to be grateful for, you immediately feel more positive an upbeat. Gratitude helps you to wash away all the fear and anxiety. You cannot feel gratitude and fear and anxiety at the same time.

So whenever you are looking for ways to invite happiness into your life, simply change your focus off everything, which may be wrong and instead think about all the wonderful things you have to be grateful for in your life. Another way to invite happiness into your experience is to do something special for someone else. Any selfless act will bring buckets of happiness, contentment and fulfillment into your life. Why not give it a whirl, living a life of meaning and fulfillment, is such a satisfying place to live.

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