Why your dream won’t make you happy.

I am learning that everything we think and feel we create in our lives. Growing up it was easy to blame my feelings and behavior on the circumstances around me because I had a difficult childhood and lots of drama at home. But all that blame did was prevent me from learning what I needed from the situation to become resilient. The truth is it’s my own thinking and attitude that determine how I feel. 

I always thought when I become an adult I will make better choices, make my dreams come true and be happy. But really when I became an adult I was the same person with the same limitations. It took me a while to recognize the pattern. Eventually, I realized that no matter where I lived, no matter what job I had, which friends I had, whether I was single or in a relationship, had money or no money, I basically had the same inner thoughts, feelings and problems. There always seemed to be a person, place or situation to blame or an excuse to make. There also was always a set of changes that I believed if made would fix everything. 

Those changes were always external too like if I had a car, a different home, if I lived in a different country or state, if there was a different president, if I had more friends, if I had more hobbies, or if I had my dream job. If, if, if. Well, I actually have changed all those things and more in my life and was lucky enough to achieve many of the goals and dreams I thought would make me happy. I achieved enough of them to know that they were not the answer. Dreams don't make you happy, happy people make dreams come true.

 That’s because it’s not our circumstances that determine how our life is. It’s the way we think about ourselves and our life in any situation. We have to overcome our own ways of thinking before we can change. Only then will we be ready to appreciate our dreams come true.

Your point of view will always affect your experience of reality for better or for worse. Your point of view pretty much stays the same until YOU change it. Not until your circumstances change. 

You who feel unhappy in your job and hate your boss will find a new job and in that new job you will find new reasons to be unhappy and hate your boss. Until you change your patterns of thinking and blaming you will repeat the same thoughts, feelings and even actions in every situation. Grumpy cat was grumpy no matter what situation until the day he died. The only difference between you and him, is he made it adorable and you just feel miserable. BUT you can be happy if you change the way you think and choose to believe new thoughts about yourself and your life starting now.

Here's the truth:

You can be happy right where you are. The only thing you need to change is your mind. If you don’t like your circumstances imagine your dream life, then imagine how you would think and feel differently if you had that dream life. You don’t have to wait for it to come to start thinking and believing the things you would believe then. 

Think about it. The only reason you want that dream life is because you want to feel happy. Happiness is an intangible feeling that doesn’t come from a particular action. It comes, like all feelings, from how you think. If you feel happy when your circumstances change, it’s because the change inspired you to think differently and believe differently about your life. 

But you have control over your thoughts and you can choose to think differently now! It’s like when you are sleeping and you dream you are winning the lottery. You feel ecstatic and it seems real. But when you wake up and you realize it wasn’t, why do you stop being happy? Because your thought changed from "I won the lottery, I’m rich", to "no I didn’t, I’m broke". But what if you decided to keep thinking, I’m rich!?

You could still feel happy. I’m not saying to just pretend you are rich when you are not, but the point is you can choose to think and feel something even when from one perspective it looks like the opposite. You can choose, for example, to think you have an awesome job or amazing friends, even when there are lots of reasons you could complain or you really only have one friend.

The reality is every circumstance can be seen from different perspectives. You are likely to see all the negative sides of yours because our brains just focus on the negative more readily. It’s an unfortunate side effect of a fast evolving world and slow evolving mind. It still thinks it needs to pin point any danger to protect the survival of the human race. Only now, the danger has turned from wild animals and ice ages to traffic and bad grades on a math test. 

Someone else could find all the positive things about your circumstance. If two different people can see the same situation in different ways then you aren’t required to see your circumstance in the same negative way you always have.  Nor are you required to feel crappy about it because you always have. 

If you truly want to be happy the secret you must know is that you will never exceed your current level of happiness by changing your circumstance. You will only exchange one set of problems for another. Until you learn how to think differently about yourself and your life now and choose to feel good about your life now, nothing will change.

You get to choose how to feel by choosing how to think. 

Here’s an exercise to practice:

Imagine your dream life. Write it down. Write down all the details. Let yourself imagine you are there and feel the feelings you would feel. What would you be thinking? Write it all down. Then pinpoint those thoughts you are thinking and start thinking them now. It may take some time and practice to accept these new thoughts. 

For example, if you want to be a famous rockstar how will you feel? Excited? Important? Loved? What do those emotions feel like in your mind and body? Try to imagine that feeling now. Then try to think things that make you feel those ways. How can you start feeling those things more often right now in your current circumstance? What can you believe differently right now to make those feelings more regular in your life?

Apply this method to your situation and then not only can you can start feeling how you want to feel, but you’ll be one massive step closer to actually living out your dream. 

Bonus Exercise:

Gain a new perspective. Try asking someone else to find all the positive things about your current situation. If you give them just the facts, without your opinions or current feelings about it, they will probably come back with a list of reasons why it's great or how you could make it great. If you allow yourself to be open-minded to another's perspective you can start feeling happier today.