Creating Lasting Happiness and Filling the Void Within

“Happiness is not a goal. It’s a by-product of a life well lived.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

I don’t care what you do or what you become as long as you’re happy. Just be happy.

This has been my mother’s well-intentioned maxim throughout my life. As much as it is an example of her unconditional love, it is also a pretty massive request if you think about it, and something I could not seem to be. Ultimately, I failed because I wasn’t happy.

If she’d wanted me to be a brain surgeon, I could have given it a shot. I’d have known I had to study in particular subjects, gained qualifications, and been okay with looking at the insides of people’s heads.

There is no such clear-cut path to happiness. For me, “just being happy” was like trying to find a destination without a map or any idea of how long it was going to take. I was in a state of anxiety for years.

I stumbled around, desperately chasing something that would make me happy. I wasn’t even sure what it was supposed to feel like. All I knew was that I felt pretty good when I took drugs, and I found passion in lots of boys.

But nothing lasted, and I needed more and more to fill me up, forever chasing a high.

I found complete oblivion in 2006, when I developed drug-induced psychosis. You know all those clichés about mad people who think they are Jesus reborn or that they can read your mind? Well, that was me. My mum said when they eventually found me, I smelled like cat food.

So, after the episode subsided and the yearlong depression that followed lifted, I started researching what had happened to my brain and discovering what happiness means to me.

For me, it’s not a buzz of excitement. That feeling is just getting what you think you want, and it never lasts. That’s not to say I now shy away from exciting experiences; I just appreciate that they are fleeting moments. And I’ve given up the obsessive chase.

Happiness as a By-product

I am pretty sure happiness is a by-product of other things. Being kind, developing coping skills, persevering with the struggles of life, being grateful for what you have, being still, letting go of things out of your control, doing the next right thing.

But the biggest discovery is that, for me, finding union with others is when I feel most spiritually awake, because we’re all alone in our heads. Emotionally identifying with another human being is when I feel happiest.

Instead of chasing happiness in things and achievements, identify what choices make you feel good, and good about yourself—and then commit to making those choices regularly.

You Don’t Have to Renounce Material Things

For a while I misunderstood the Buddhist idea of renunciation. I thought that in order to be free from suffering, I had to give up the superficial causes of suffering: spending money, sex, alcohol, looking at myself in the mirror for too long.

But the thing is, I am a sensory creature, in a world full of beautiful things; why not enjoy it? These things in themselves are not bad, it’s the ideas we place on them and the attachments we have that cause the problems.

If you expect that getting your dream job is going to fill the emptiness inside you, you’re going to run into problems sooner or later.

Enjoy the material things, but remember that enduring happiness comes from those choices you identified before.

Letting Go

A lot of my discontent was due to my inability to let things go, whether that was feelings of rejections in my past, or worrying about rejection happening in the future. I used to hate the phrase “let it go.” Okay, so how the do you do that then? What do you do to let something go?

What I’ve learned over the last few years is that letting go, more often than not, means doing nothing. And doing nothing is as much a choice as screaming and shouting.

Doing nothing gives you space between how you feel and your next positive action. Living in that space means that I am no longer a slave to my emotions, or more accurately, I’m no longer scared to feel them.

I can notice the feeling, label it and see it for what it is—a dent to my pride, a knock to my self-esteem. And rather than immediately trying to get rid of it by blaming someone else, self-flagellating, seeking revenge, or anaesthetizing with drugs, I have faith that it will go.

No matter what we’re feeling, it always passes if we let it. So, enjoy happiness while it’s here, and know that if it’s not, so long as you’re making positive choices, it will be back again.

Happy day image via Shutterstock