WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE…
WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE…
You are being gifted with one or the other. $1 million or life-long joyfulness?
Thoughts? Let me paint a picture.
I have a friend who was feeling very blue, like for a bit too long kinda blue. Smart man, never depressed, owned some restaurants, always been entrepreneurial, etc.
However, he couldn’t shake this feeling of dread. It kept him up at night, the sky was always grey. His businesses were having problems due to the pandemic and there didn’t seem to be a lot of hope for restoration. However, he had been in a place like this before so the fear wasn’t just confined to this scenario...something was amiss with this new fear.
So funky is as funky does he takes off to nowhere in particular and ends up at a local casino which was so far off of his regular radar that he had to pinch himself to see if he was sleepwalking. It was never a place he frequented. “What the hell am I doing here?” he said to himself. However, within a few minutes, he gets his answer…he wins…now get this…1 million dollars!
Dumbfounded, elated, scared, confused. You name confounding emotions and he was feeling all of them.
Oh yes, there was momentary happiness, like the moment he won. However, he was very aware that happiness subsisted only when one felt joyful and that was the one feeling he could not access. He felt no joy.
And so what did he do as he walked vacantly through the next few weeks? Always being the responsible person, he paid his debts, sold his house and bought a small condo, loaned money to needy friends, removed himself from the restaurants, and then?
He found himself broke. What the hell!!
This is crazy, you might say. “I would never let anything like that happen to me.” Of course, you would say that.
We’ve all heard the expression that money can’t buy you love. Well, it certainly cannot buy you happiness either. Happiness is a state of mind…what you think is what you feel and if you are aligning to feeling joy, gladness freedom, and happiness then you are these feelings. The opposite comes when you are feeling joyless.
Wherever you go, there you are.
Note: Happiness is fleeting however joy is inherent. We are born with the feeling of joy…possibly a gift from whomever created us and it can be accessed as long as you nurture yourself and remind your mind that you are in control of it.
In choosing joy there is hope and this is what my friend discovered. With deliberation, commitment, and daily practice he went on to create a successful novel business, opened his heart to a new partner, and moved away from where he had been suffering for so many years. And with passion and gratefulness and persistence on how to access joy, he practiced ownership of this feeling until it became a Way of Being present and beautifully alive.
With joy, hardship offers growth and opportunity. With joy, self-esteem, and self-respect are indestructible. Joy is the catalyst that embraces peace and transcends. Happiness holds its hand and reacts in the moment with an outward expression.
So know that to have the contentment of periodic happy yet fleeting moments, you must rediscover the foundation of joy that lives within your heart by practicing ‘the art of deliberate intention;’ that to be in full expression of the big winning(s) in your life you must exercise true ownership of this gift called joy which will be blessing you with the gift to repeatedly live a million dollar life with peace.
May the brilliance of your true self be bountiful.
