Independently Happy

It's hard not to be envious of people who are independently wealthy.  No matter what else happens, they are still wealthy.

Our odds of winning the Lotto or being born into the family that started Walmart are pretty slim, but have you ever considered the possibility of being independently happy?

Why do the external circumstances of our lives get to dictate whether or not we are happy?  Why do we allow other individuals who are perpetually unhappy (I know you know one) to force their unhappiness on us?

Most of us allow our attitude to blow whichever direction the winds of daily circumstance take it; rather than determining for ourselves that we will be happy independent of what happens around us.

Similarly, have you ever noticed how the things we pray the hardest for are often things we already had and lost?   Ask the parent of a sick child if she has ever prayed harder than to have her child's health back.  Would you ever pray that hard for a boat?  A lot of the time when we want something back so badly, we didn't truly appreciate it when we did have it (speaking from experience here).

Why does it take a crisis for us to recognize what great things we already had?  Imagine if someone you love died and you prayed so fervently that the Lord brought them back to life.  Your joy would be off the chart.  Yet, since that person is still here; you are not experiencing that immense joy.

That begs the question, would your joy in the previous example happen because a miracle happened or would your joy come from having your loved one back?  If its the latter, shouldn't you be that happy now?

The means for independent happiness is all around us.  We just miss it while we choose to focus on the gossip of someone we don't even like or what we have decided is an unfair hand in life.

Give this a try...pick the person that you love the most and pretend that he/she died tragically.  Then spend this week acting as you would if that person was miraculously returned to you.  No matter what else happens, you will be happier than any amount of money could provide.  The usual interruptions in your life will seem petty and will have little ability to stem the tide of your joy.

We have it in us to be independently happy, we just need to focus on the right things.  2 Nephi 2:25 says that, "...men are that they might have joy."  If an all-powerful Father in Heaven put us here for the purpose of being happy, it seems likely that we can be.

John Greenleaf Whittier
For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, "it might have been."