How To Find Happiness Even in Challenging Times

Have you ever thought to yourself, I’ll be happy when...??

Or

If only I could be, do or have _______, then I'd be happier?

You fill in the blank. I’ll be happy when I have succeeded. I’ll be happy when I am out of debt or financially free. I’ll be happy when “all of this” is over. I’ll be happy when my business has expanded or when I reach the top. I’ll be happy when I’m married, or I’ll finally be happy when I am divorced. I’ll be happy when I’ve lost weight and can fit into those jeans hiding in the back of the closet. Or, maybe, I’ll be happy when I can finally take that dream vacation that has eluded me for years.

It’s not your fault. The truth is most of us have been led to believe that happiness exists outside of us—that we can only be happy when something to be happy about actually occurs. Well, if our inner happiness hinges on the events of the day or even in our life, we may be on a roller-coaster of unhappiness for a very, very long time.

We have been programmed to think that other people, circumstances, or results are the source of our happiness. I totally get it! Although I had a very happy childhood, I lived a large portion of my young adult life looking for the happiness that had been erased at the age of eighteen with the passing of my father from cancer. My life looked very bleak at that time, and so began my search for happiness, only to have results like dropping out of college, being married AND divorced, chronic illness, a market crash, and economic uncertainty. (All contributing to even greater unhappiness AND despair.)

You may be living with similar results or maybe you are simply feeling a “dullness” in life, not feeling fully fulfilled personally and/or professionally. Today, it could look like your world is crumbling before your very eyes; there is uncertainty in any or all areas of your life, especially as it relates to the future. There are times when it is so easy to feel depressed, worried, and filled with fear, which can even seem bleak. I get it. I’ve lived it, AND I’ve made it to the other side.

What if, instead, we begin to look at happiness from another angle or different perspective?

I am sharing this experience with you so you can have the keys to finding your way to happiness no matter what your current circumstances look like today. These are the keys that I have used personally to find my way through some of my darkest days, and I continue to use them on a daily basis to live a life that I now love living each day, no matter what may come my way.

My BIG A-HA and life-changing experience happened 20 years ago when I had the great realization that my happiness did not depend on my personal success or life’s results. You see, I was diagnosed with a life-threatening form of cancer. At that time, I could not find one reason to be happy. In fact, I was VERY unhappy (to say the least) because it seemed as if the diagnosis had come “out of the blue” AND was in total opposition to every bit of success I had finally achieved both professionally and personally.

One morning, not long after being diagnosed, I was watching a TV talk show, and the guest was a man named Hamilton Jordan, who had written a book called No Such Thing as a Bad Day. The moment I heard those words, I was not only taken aback, but it was as if a pitcher of ice-cold water had been thrown in my face. No such thing as a bad day! Are you kidding me??? With everything that I was facing at that particular time, it seemed like a recipe for disaster and certainly a “bad day” to me. This man went on to share his story about being diagnosed with a form of cancer, and what he found was that by simply looking for the good, he actually found it. He said that no day had the power to be a bad day unless we made it that way—unless we chose to make it that way.

Wait a minute! I thought to myself, you mean I can choose to have a good day or a bad day depending how I decided it to be?? Could it be true that I had the power to decide how any day could be lived, even in the midst of what appeared to be some of the darkest hours of my life??? What I heard clearly in my mind was that by shifting the way we looked at things, it could and would make all of the difference in our results. This one thought helped me have an immediate shift in my mindset AND changed the trajectory of my entire life.

My Quest: I challenged myself to find the good in EVERYTHING and thus I found the positive even in the midst of a life-threatening challenge. It was as if I had been given a whole new set of eyes. The result? It was a major realization that no matter what was happening in my life, no matter the challenge, I could be happy in each and every moment. By generating that happiness “within,” the result would be the cultivation and point of power for total transformation.

I believe that this new set of eyes in finding the good, even in the midst of what looked like a horrific situation, was instrumental in my ability to THRIVE instead of merely survive a life-threatening diagnosis. Even when I was told, “You better go home and pray for a miracle,” I decided that every day was to be one of the happiest days I could create and then go on to live. There would be no more waiting to be happy and no more hoping that happiness would find me. I was now in charge of my happiness and what I know for sure, is that in this very moment, you are too!

“Remember, you hold the keys to your happiness!”