Did you know that happiness is directly tied to being true to yourself? Of course, you did, but are you saying Yes when you mean Yes, and No when you mean No? If you aren’t doing this, you can’t find happiness can you?
Are you making decisions based on what you feel other people want? Have you been consistently doing what is right for you, and are you happy with your present life, and with the person you see today in the mirror?
Even if you are in a place of happiness right now, can you maintain it? Do you have a process in place to course-correct when you find you are drifting away from your happy state and not being true to yourself? Be honest and if you are not genuinely happy or as happy as you want to be in the most important areas of your life, keep reading.
Throughout this book I challenge you to take specific steps to ensure you become and remain as close to your true self and true happiness as possible. It’s designed to help you develop and execute a repeatable process that keeps you aligned and true to YOUR core beliefs and values, not others. This is key to your living a truly happy life.
Look in the mirror and ask, “Is there a part of my life where I am not true to myself? Any part where I have compromised too much?
Even if you feel 100% happy at this moment, chances are there is room for improvement. You may also find it difficult to maintain your happiness and the trueness to yourself that it takes to keep it. Why can’t we keep happiness once we find it? Why do we have to work to maintain it? It’s because over periods of time, our experiences in life, big and small, break us over and over again in several ways.
Everyone becomes broken at some point, and it usually happens in three ways. Some of us break, shattering into tiny little pieces and we give up on life. Some of us break into jagged edges and turn into emotional and physical weapons that hurt other people. Lastly some of us break free from something, a hindrance, and once we heal, we are now able to do what we were destined to do. Which are you? Which do you want to be?
Can you change from shattered or jagged to broken free from life’s hurts and challenges, where you can heal and be happy? The answer is yes, and it starts and ends with you. It begins whenever you are ready and it’s all on you to begin taking the steps to make your life better.
Being broken by life happens more often for some than others, but we all experience it. It is normal and natural when you think about it. It’s also necessary for growth. You must destroy before you can build. You must “break ground” on construction projects which end up being beautiful, magnificent structures. A body builder must break down his muscles through exercise, then let them heal so they can grow bigger and stronger.
Suppose you, as a patient, go to a doctor about the pain you are experiencing in your knee. During your examination the doctor takes an x-ray that reveals a small fracture in your lower leg near your ankle. You are experiencing pain in your knee, but the original damage was done in your lower leg. You did not address the injury there when it happened and now it is affecting another part of your body, your knee (your life). The original injury has healed but improperly, out of alignment with your normal walking function and now causes pain in your knee every time you try to walk. (Every time you try to be happy)
To fix this problem, your surgeon has to re-break your bone to realign the fracture so it can heal and grow back into proper alignment with the rest of your body (your life). The goal of the treatment is to realign your bone into a position that improves your walking function and eliminate the pain. Depending on the severity of the misalignment, some of the bone may need to be trimmed to allow for proper orientation (focus) so everything will line up correctly as it heals.
“Breaking something in your life stops its progress and changes your trajectory and focus. Realignment accepts the change and orients you to a new direction in life.”
You don’t like the idea of having your bone re-broken but that’s the only way you’ll get your life back and be able to walk without pain. Your lower leg heals, grows stronger, and it’s now realigned with the rest of your body, pain free. You go on with your life, happy you did it because you would have never gotten rid of the pain and found healing in that area of your life without it. This is your happiness.
Brokenness spurs growth but you must pair it with realignment and trimming for it to heal properly. If the doctor had re-broken your leg but didn’t realign or trim the broken area, you would have ended up in the same situation or worse. In this case, you are both the doctor and the patient, and it is up to you whether your brokenness results in healthy growth or a poor healing.
Look at the broken areas in your life, the things that inhibit your happiness then ask yourself, “why didn’t I re-break that situation, make a realignment, or trim away the harmful areas when this part of my life broke?” Remember that healing is an acceptance and moving on. If you feel pain after the break and initial healing (acceptance) in that area, you need to re-break it. You must break the cycle, habits, and level of acceptance you have and realign your thinking, your situation, and trim out bad and unhealthy influences. The trimming helps your orientation and focus as you connect and realign the re-broken area to the other parts of your life as you heal.
For instance, if you previously had problems in your marriage but have now found a new happiness with your spouse, you must trim away the bad influences that contributed to your growing out of alignment in your relationship. You must break free from those things and trim away any remaining residue of those bad influences to keep your happiness.
If you have found new joy in starting a business you have always dreamed of having, you may have to break away from friends or habits that take your focus away from putting in the time required to make your business a success. You must trim away what distracts you and focus (orient yourself) on the business.
Some people are unhappy with their weight or physical appearance. You can improve in this area by breaking your current eating habits and starting new ones. Focus on healthier foods, manage your intake, and exercise more. Don’t worry about what other people think you should be doing. Concentrate on what you know is right for you.
When my son was being recruited for football, several of the college coaches told the kids that if they wanted to be successful as a college athlete, they must (break, trim) stop hanging out with kids who don’t share the same goals as they did because it would be a distraction and would inhibit their success.
They were told to realign their thinking and re-evaluate who they should be spending most of their time with. For them to be happy and successful as college football players, they had to orient themselves to focusing on good grades, maintain good study habits, attach to people with similar goals, and work hard on the practice field. They were told to break, realign, and orient.
If you are unhappy with your financial situation, you must take an x-ray of your spending habits and find what needs to be re-broken and break it. Stop the momentum and progress of racking up debt. Stop the bad habit of eating out every night. Stop buying things you don’t need. Start paying bills first. Start saving, etc. Now trim away the habit of doing shopping therapy. Trim away going to expensive restaurants or buying expensive clothes. As you do this realignment, start orienting yourself toward budgeting and showing self-control with your money.
There are other things you can do as well like upgrading your skills, so you’d be a better candidate for promotions and raises. Sharpen your resume, network, ask your employer what you can do to improve. All these things are up to you, and it starts when you start.
Social Media isn’t all that social and not that friendly either.
Social media can be a killer to your self-esteem and can wreck your confidence. It trains you to conform to your peer’s core beliefs and values. Social media teaches that you need other’s acceptance to be an ok person. If you don’t get enough likes for the things that represent the true you, according to social media something is wrong with you. You aren’t like everyone else and that becomes a problem for you. It makes you start saying yes to things you don’t agree with because everyone else is doing it or likes it. Look at a person who is constantly on their phone. Their who belief system is being molded for that entire 8 to 10 hours they spend on Snapchat, Instagram, Tick Tok, and Facebook. That are being taught how to dress, what’s funny, what’s in style, what business to go into and its all 100% accurate, right?
Everyone, including you, should dress in the style and colors you like. You know what you like, so why change who you are because 30 people don’t like it, most of whom you’ve never met. You posted a picture of you in an outfit you just bought and someone you never met doesn’t like it. What do you do? You leave a post about going into business and someone says, “no, that’s going to be too hard, you should try this, it’s a lot easier.” What do you do? You leave a post about a TV show or doing something fun, and you only get a few likes. How do you feel?
Unknowingly, you are seeking approval of who you are with social media. After awhile it begins to mold and change you. You morph into a person defined by the comments and responses to your posts and pictures. One thing I don’t like about social media is that you put your whole life out there for people to judge and judge they will. You are putting yourself on trial and the verdict for some of us is not-popular. It’s devastating, you question yourself and eventually stop being yourself. You leave your true you in the past and are now unhappy, chasing likes and positive reinforcement from people you don’t even know. This is in your control but if left unchecked, it will break you.
The thing you must realize about social media is that most of what is posted and said is just not true. People hide behind their true selves just like you are now and are more brave to say something negative or hurtful through the internet than they would in person. They get to act out in another persona, so…
you are in fact measuring your self-worth against a person that is being as fake as you are about to be when you take it in as fact and start changing yourself.
Look at the many businesses people promote as, look at me, do what I do and you can make thousands of dollars, just buy my program. It all looks good and legitimate until you try to put it into action. Just slow down for a minute and think logically about it. If they were so successful at this business, would they really want all that competition from helping other people do it? I don’t think so. If I’m running a successful business and am truly focused on it, I don’t have the time to teach other people how to do it and I don’t want the competition in that same space either. In most cases, their business is selling that business idea and they are not running that kind of business for themselves. Social media targets your emotion and its never good to make decisions or lifestyle changes based on emotion. It will break you.
We are also broken by life events that are out of our control. We may lose a loved one in death, suffer in an accident that physically damages our body, or be the recipient of mental abuse from someone we thought loved us.
A parent can be broken by watching their children being broken by life. Trusted friends can break us when we are betrayed by them. “How could they do this to me? We were friends.” Our confidence can be broken through our personal failures, and we lose hope. Our health and weight not being ideal can break us as well.
The important thing to remember is you don’t have to stay broken when you are shattered and feel like giving up. You don’t have to keep your edges jagged and lash out and hurt others. I believe, I know your situation is not permanent and you can start changing it today. I know that you can break free, heal and return (orient) back to your once happy state, back to your true self. It’s never too late to make that change. I know because I did it in my life.
To Be Truly Happy You Must Break, Realign, and Orient.
To find your happiness, you need to re-examine your life, find where the pain is and what needs to be broken. Then realign and trim so that the healing of getting back to being true to yourself will fit seamlessly into your life. You want to be where being your true self is your normal, not the other way around. Otherwise, you will keep making the same mistakes and repeatedly find yourself in the same unhappy situations over and over again and the pain will never go away.
If you examine your life, have an “x-ray” on the part of your life that’s painful and unsatisfying, you will find what needs to be re-broken. If you re-break it, then realign and trim, this part of your life will heal correctly, you will have no more pain, and begin to enjoy happiness.
When something breaks, it can shatter and become useless or inoperable, like glass and other thin or fragile materials. Even if it does not appear shattered on the surface, it may still be just as vulnerable. Ever heard of thick skin? People with thick skin won’t be broken as easily with words as someone without it but they do still break. They are just better at hiding their brokenness. There is a lot of pain in hiding your pain. I don’t want this for you either.
In cases where you feel shattered, it may appear there is no easy or conceivable way to pick up the pieces and fix it. You feel crippled, helpless, and possibly need assistance to do things that other people can do without the help and encouragement you need.
Some of us come from broken homes and are still hurt and broken after many years. We never got the x-ray to see what needed fixing. We never re-broke that damaged area and realigned our life to what God intended it to be. So we remain unhappy and don’t know why.
We may become the jagged edge that is an emotional or physical weapon wielded against others who cross our path on the wrong day. In this case, we were not completely broken as far as being shattered but are defensive-minded and lash out when we do not get our way, do not like a person, or do not like how we are treated. You do not have to be like that but its ok that you are as long as you recognize where you are and plan to do something about it. If you do recognize where you are, that means you have your x-rays and have honestly appraised who you are in comparison to who you are supposed to be.
Now it’s time for you to break something because I don’t want you to stay where you are. You can’t be happy there. It’s not possible.
Although we may feel emotionally fragile and afraid because of the hurt, we do not have to and should not want to stay there. We avoid getting into new relationships or out of a current one because of past hurts and because of our fears. We run from confrontation, from life’s challenges, and opportunities because we do not want to get hurt or hurt others. We rationalize continuing to be that other person and not true to ourselves because that’s the only way to get and maintain peace. We do not want to feel the fear and pain that comes from being emotionally crushed or have the guilt of crushing others. You could never be more wrong and you’ll never find happiness or be able to contribute to the happiness of the people around you until you decide to change into… your real self.
The unadulterated truth is that you cannot reach your destination of happiness if you stay out of alignment with your true self, with how God created you. It is possible to break free from the pain, unhappiness, dissatisfaction and unfulfillment in your life. It starts with you deciding to be you. As you continue to read, you’ll learn how to heal, put it back together and live being true to yourself and genuinely happy and fulfilled. You will be able to get what you want out of life, which is the peace and happiness you are seeking.
What are some of the things we must break? We must break free from our fears, toxic friendships and relationships, bad habits, negative and unproductive mindsets. It can sometimes be something as simple as breaking your silence and speaking up in situation where you have purposely kept quiet before.
Say “yes” when your soul, spirit, and everything in you tells you that “yes” is the right answer. Say “no” when you feel and know it should be “no.” Don’t compromise! Make decisions that you truly believe are the right decisions to make. Don’t do something because that’s what another person would want you to do. Be consistent in being true to the person you see in the mirror, to yourself, and you will find yourself invigorated, empowered, more fulfilled and very, very happy and satisfied.
It all starts with you taking your first step. Have you seen this? A baby’s first steps are fraught with failure, but you will never see a baby give up on trying to walk. You never have to tell a baby to try one more time, do you? A baby will take hundreds of first steps before it can walk. All of us at one time or another have been told to stop being a baby. Well, in this case, be a baby and keep trying even when no one else is watching and encouraging you. It is also a good idea to identify the right people and designate them to be in your corner as you take your first few steps. After taking that first step, the baby tries a second step, then a third and falls down. But it gets back up and the excited cheering from parents, family, and friends makes it an enjoyable learning experience.
I suggest you take baby steps in your progression to increased happiness and that you be patient in doing it. It can take a baby 4 to 6 months after taking its first step to progress to where its good at walking. Having people in your corner who have walked the same path can make it an even more enjoyable and successful process for you. I propose you take the first step, then the second, then the third, fourth and fifth step and in no time, you will be walking in happiness, and walking true to your core values and beliefs. If you fall, get up and try again. It’s ok to be a baby.
Continue to seek out people who have broken through the same areas you are working to break through. They’ve been there and know how to “walk” and can help you on your journey to walking in happiness.
This is where you want to be, where you maintain happiness and can course-correct to stay on the right path. As important as it is to have a support person or group, the most important thing is to be always honest with yourself. It is vital to your success.
It’s been said many times that the person hardest to be honest with is going to be yourself. Be honest about where you are, what you need to change, and where you want to be in life. Self-honesty in these areas will determine how close you come to true happiness and satisfaction in your life and how soon you find it.
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