Setting Yourself Up For Happiness
This is a transcript of the video which has been edited for readability.
In this blog post, I want to talk to you about happiness. Happiness is something that we all desire, but then after some insights I had recently, I realized that it’s something that we actually can't chase.
While forcing myself to sleep, I was able to gain insights regarding our journey towards happiness.
My Insights While Struggling to Sleep
My insight on happiness came to me the other day when I was trying to get some sleep. I was tossing and turning, forcing myself to try to go to sleep because I had a busy morning the next day. But no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t fall asleep.
And from that struggle, I realized that sleep is something that I cannot force upon myself. I can only set up the optimal conditions for sleep. This could mean a cool temperature room, a comfortable bed, a dark space, decreased sounds and less ambient noise for me. So yes, we can set up all these optimal conditions for sleep to happen, but I can’t force the actual sleep to happen.
Just like you can’t force yourself to fall asleep, I also realized that you can’t force yourself to be happy.
You Can’t Force Sleep and Happiness
The reason I bring this up is because it's similar to happiness. We can’t force ourselves to feel happy but we can set up the optimal conditions for that. This might look like a well-rested night, a healthy diet, or exercising so that you feel fully rejuvenated. But although you can set up the optimal conditions for happiness, you can’t go for happiness itself.
Although it does sound discouraging, this is actually a great thing. Because it made me realize that we don’t need to chase happiness or sleep anymore. All we need to do is create the optimal conditions to allow sleep or happiness to freely enter our lives.
We’ve been told many times to chase happiness, but what if it’s actually something that we can’t chase? Read our blog post to find out why and what you should be doing instead.