“There is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink and find satisfaction in all their toil – this is the gift of God.” Ecclesiastes 3:12-13

 

Shut the front door! How have I never noticed this jewel of a scripture?!?! That baby is going up on my mirror TODAY! 

Here’s the deal…people think that if only I could be more successful, I would be happy. Eeeeehhhhh (buzzer noise) Not true! It’s just not. But, oh, we hold on to thinking this way even though there are hundreds of celebrities that have proven otherwise for us. If it were true, the King of Rock & Roll wouldn’t have died the way he did. Precious Whitney Houston, who had it all and I adored, would’ve been happy. The funniest comedian of our generation wouldn’t have been so miserable to sadly end his life. These people had success but still were missing an element of happiness that is there for he taking for you and I. I have not had that kind of success but I have had that kind of misery of the mind, hopelessness, and seemingly for little to no reason. Some people like the amazing people above just had sooooo much talent and maybe connections that perhaps they found success independent of happiness. And who knows, they may have actually been genuinely happy in the beginning which helped them find the success they found.

But for the rest of us who are not gifted to the extreme levels of those or as well connected are not going to stumble upon success. In most cases, if not all, success comes from happiness. Not the other way around!  

 

Here’s the point, for years the American Dream has conditioned us to think that we will be happy based our achievements and accomplishments. { But research has clearly shown us that positive emotion actually equips us to deal with adversity, rebound successfully from set backs, see the big picture with clarity, and ultimately LIVE LONGER! }  I’ld call that success. No matter how you define success, the bottom line is that there can be joy in the journey, ups and downs and all.

 

As long as your happiness is dependent on your success level, you’ll never find happiness. Even once you’re at what you think is “the top” there is always someone else doing better that week according to whoever.  What if for just today, you chose to be happy anyway, in spite of your brutiful life and not because of it? 

 

Challenge of the week:  

Be both passionate and content with life in whatever state it is. That’s when you will experience the epitome of success. I’m a testimony of this! True happiness to my very core has been the greatest gift from God to me like Ecclesiastes says. The girl writing this blog is the epitome of success because I’m happy anyway. You can be, too! Such a simple “secret to success”…it was there for the taking all along! Just determine to be HAPPY ANYWAY & watch success all but fall in your lap. Happy Monday, ya’ll!!!