Your Right to Happiness

It’s a weird life isn’t it? Full of ups and downs, petty irritations, things you don’t want to do, and the occasional force ten problem on the emotional Richter Scale.

We all want to be happy and yet we end up doing so many things we don’t enjoy, rushing from one place to another often for reasons other than our own, working like beavers in mundane jobs just to maintain some form of financial stability, and far less often doing something we actually like doing.

Our personal lives can be fantastic, but they can also be complicated by relationships with lovers, family, friends, acquaintances and colleagues, until there comes a point when a desert island sounds like a perfectly good idea even if it is populated by spiders, snakes and cannibals.

What is it about us that we find it so difficult to be happy? Why are our emotions blown in all directions at once, and even though we know it’s pointless to get cross, upset or take offence we do all that – usually at the same time? Is it because we’re emotional creatures and therefore we just have to put up with it? Or is it that we’ve lost the ability for quietness, for going to that safe space within us and working out what we want and what would make us happy?

Do we feel able to be happy, or even worthy of working out what would bring us joy and happiness? My experiences as a Psychic and Life Coach tells me that many people wouldn’t consider that they have a divine right to be happy and live a joyful and fulfilled life full of all the abundance they ever dreamed about.

In the west we tend to live in a negative society. It’s no secret that many famous people consider it to be a ‘build you up to tear you down’ culture. People on the spiritual path are fighting this attitude tooth and nail but we are too few at the moment against too much negativity.

We are bombarded with negativity from the moment we can hear, see and read. We are surrounded by adults who are struggling with their everyday lives. We are sent to school only to find ourselves tested from a very early age and therefore being set up for failure years before we should even be able to spell the word let alone be branded with it.

Then we struggle through university, or start a job we fell into because you didn’t know what else to do. We have a few romantic relationships, many of which end in a blaze of misery, get a mortgage, buy a shoe box, and all the worries of adult life hurl themselves enthusiastically onto our shoulders. Suddenly we understand our parents!

Ok so I’m painting a bleak picture here and it’s not that bad all the time, but that is a whistle stop tour of the basic adult experience minus a few holidays. Although there are some people out there who are lucky enough to find their path in life very quickly, many people are either bored witless by their never decreasing rut or frustrated because they know there must be more to life than this but they don’t know what that more might be.

Well there are many things that would improve your life, many of them external and all of them transient, but the most important factor has to be happiness. Happiness will transform your life in a way that nothing else can, but where are you going to find it and how are you going to get it?

We all know that the old cliché “you can’t buy happiness” is irritatingly true, even though we shop until we drop in order to try to disprove it. Other people keep irritating us in one way or another making it difficult to be an ocean of serenity all the time. Work is boring, irritating or debilitating depending on whether you’re fairly lucky or just doing it for the sake of it. Romance is a minefield and you keep stepping on the mines. Much as you love your children more than life itself you didn’t realise that love could be this challenging. If only we didn’t have all that and finances going on we’d probably make a pretty good stab at the whole joy thing wouldn’t we?

Guess what, you can have all that going on and be happy if you do two things. Firstly accept that you have a right to be happy. Secondly remember that the criterion for coming to this world isn’t “be as miserable as possible as often as you can”; no matter what your upbringing may have led you to believe.
On top of that remember that your house, possessions and clothes won’t make you happy, and if you’re not an earth babe nor will withdrawing to a yurt and living on organic vegetables. Each to their own isn’t a bad mantra to live by. Not everyone is cut out for the back to the land thing and it doesn’t make you a bad person if you aren’t.

We have too many rules in our society and they complicate our day-to-day lives in many and varied ways. One of the things I really enjoy about the spiritual thinking I was taught and have developed over the past 25 years is that it removes most of the guilt issues that are imposed on western society.

Yes committing crime is wrong, anything that deliberately hurts another living being or thing cannot be acceptable in a happy society, but many of the petty rules we were programmed with serve only to make us miserable.

Many people believe that they have to be in romantic relationships to feel safe and happy, yet often it’s those very relationships that contribute to much of the unhappiness. Where is the rule that says “the unhappier a relationship is the longer you should stay put”? It can often be fairer to leave and allow the other person to find someone that does love them.

We know that if we live in the west and we’re not independently wealthy we have to work, but where is the rule that says “the unhappier it makes you the better” or “you’re not allowed to leave your job if you don’t like it”? A job is a job and you can leave it, or retrain, or buy your own business, or downshift and become a ski instructor. The possibilities are there if you think outside the box, you just need to look for them.

You’ll be aware of the old saying “you’re stuck with your family, thank God you can choose your friends”, well you’re not stuck with your family you can walk away if you dislike them that much and it’s probably kinder to them if you do. As to friendships, even when we choose our friends we often remain in uncomfortable friendships for reasons that defy explanation, yet we refuse to walk away. If it isn’t working and you’re not compatible let it go.

We drive cars we dislike. We eat food that isn’t good for us and makes us put on weight and that in turn makes us miserable. We tell our friends regularly how much we hate our hair but we don’t find a good hairdresser and do something about it. I’m sure you can think of many other similar ways in which we undermine ourselves on a daily basis, and all because no one ever told us that we don’t just deserve happiness we have a right to it.

As a Medium I work with the Spirit World and as a Psychic I work with the people in this world, and the difference in attitude and approach has to be experienced to be believed.

Communicators from the Spirit World come through in a blaze of light and joy, they have been able to let go of the emotional garbage of this life and they are much, much happier than we seem capable of being and they want to bring this happiness to us.

I had always thought that the Spirit World was a place of unconditional love and it seems that it is, and yet people who didn’t get on in this life don’t seem to hang out together, they talk it through then go their own way without rancour. They don’t blame, they don’t back bite, and they don’t stay with a failed relationship they let it go with love. We can do all that.

The problem with us is that we feel guilty and as if we’ve let ourselves down if something doesn’t work whereas the Spirit World doesn’t. However, there’s no rule that says we have to get it right all the time, and ‘right’ as you know is a matter of opinion. I’ve never heard my Guides talk in terms of right and wrong if I’ve had a problem with someone or felt that I could have behaved better, they just don’t deal with those concepts because they respect everyone and can see all sides of the situation.

To be happy we have to accept our humanity without accepting any limitations either on our physical and mental abilities or on our right to happiness. We have to understand that it doesn’t matter what our society has taught us, or what attitudes we’re bombarded with day in and day out, what matters is our state of mind and how we choose to react.

Mahatma Gandhi was once walking along a pavement in India with a British friend when some other British men came along and barged Gandhi into the gutter. His friend was all for catching up with them and punching their lights out, but Gandhi said no. His attitude was that if he chose not to take offence then nothing anyone could do or say could offend him. It didn’t matter what they thought they’d achieved, it was what happened in his mind that defined him. Gandhi was an amazing man, and we would do well to learn from him.

However, it won’t matter how much we learn if we don’t apply that learning to our lives. It’s one thing to discover a good concept but it’s another to actually make that concept part of you and do something with it.
We’re coming up to that time of year now where we consider our New Year resolutions and all the changes we’d like to make next year. The same resolutions that fall by the wayside in a blaze of guilt and self loathing sometime before the 31st January.

How about this year you make one simple New Year resolution – to accept your right to be happy? Once you’ve achieved that you can start to think about your life and gradually and slowly make small changes that will make you happier.

Once you’re happier and consequently feeling stronger you can start to tackle the medium sized issues in your life, and in doing so make yourself feel even better and even stronger. Then you’ll be in the position to deal with the really big stuff because you’ll be feeling strong and confident, and you won’t be weighed down by all the emotional and physical baggage you’ve been carrying.

Take small steps, start with simple things and let little successes build towards huge accomplishments; leave the giant leaps for mankind to the astronauts. If you get muddled so what? Pick yourself up, dust yourself down and try again until you’re comfortable.

I wish you all the very best for your festive season, whatever and whenever that is, and I wish you a Happy All Year for 2009 and beyond. You deserve it.

© Deb Hawken - First published in High Spirit Magazine December 2008