Soren Kierkegaard said, 

"Life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced"

Welcome to The Soul Podcast. I’m Stacey Wheeler.

When Kierkegaard wrote those words, he was thinking about happiness. 

Kierkegaard knew that happiness comes from being present in the moment and trying to enjoy the ride. He understood that when we stop seeing our circumstances as problems and start thinking of them as experiences, happiness can flow from the same situation grief once did.

He wrote,

“A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.”

Kierkegaard had a tragic journey before reaching these thoughts. The death of loved ones was a constant reminder of sadness and the fragility of existence. By early adulthood, all but one of his immediate family members had died. Five of his six sibling and both of his parents were taken by the time he was 25. Imagine the impact that would have on you. Imagine the way it would make you question your place in the world –and why the world is as it is. His world had presented him with decades of pain. His reality was sadness.  He concluded that he could not look outside himself for happiness. 

Kierkegaard was far from the first to learn this lesson –and surely will not be the last. Around 1600 years earlier Marcus Aurelius said,

“Very little is needed to make a happy life. It is all within yourself in your way of thinking.” 

I could share quotes for you from famous and historic figures for over an hour that say essentially the same thing. Many great minds came to the same conclusion and it is part of many philosophical and religious traditions. 

The idea that our thoughts influence our happiness and drive the direction of our life is a well-known truth. And it is undeniable that our thoughts have a direct impact on our destiny. So why are so few of us using this well-known truth to improve our lives? Why aren’t more of us applying this concept to gain happier outcomes and greater joy in life?

Why do so many of us choose to play the victim to life and choose to believe our happiness is beyond our control?

Being responsible for our happiness requires us to take ownership of our unhappiness. And taking ownership of our unhappiness requires self-discipline. Blaming the world for our unhappiness requires none. So we choose the easier path of blaming outside forces for the state of our happiness.

Has someone ever failed you, hurt you or let you down? In that moment we are given a choice. We have the option to tell ourselves a story about what happened. The first response is usually to tell ourselves we’ve been treated unfairly. And you know (in many cases) we probably have been. What we tell ourselves next is vital. Because the next thing we tell ourselves determines how we move forward after being wronged. It is our responsibility (to ourselves) to package this event in a way that allows us to be our happiest. 

The thing that happened is outside of ourselves. The response we have is inside of ourselves. And we are the only one who gets to decide how it lives in us. And this takes awareness and constant effort.

We are responsible for our happiness. Nobody else!

Most of us are resistant to such a simple truth when we’re young. I know I was. Though I was subtly aware of this concept as a young man, I didn’t get that it was a universal truth. 

I wish I’d read Kierkegaard and Marcus Aurelius when I was young. I might have saved so much time in my evolution of understanding. I didn’t start the important work of learning to direct my thinking. So, now I do the work, as a man.

So, one great truth is that we direct our happiness. But the other important truth of it is that happiness is not a destination. Happiness is a way of being. It is only in the correct state of thinking that we can stay in a space of happiness. 

If you’re like the rest of us, you’ve had struggles with finding happiness too. And there’s a reason for this. 

I’ve lived my life with the belief that life is about the pursuit of happiness. In the end what we discover is happiness can’t be caught. And there’s another aspect to happiness. Yes, it is quite nice –but it doesn’t last.  It is transitory. Here and then gone… leaving us to play another round of happiness hide-and-seek.  Happiness is always there, as close as the warmth of the sun. And like the sun it visits sometimes without warning. Happiness is like beams of sunlight on a cloudy day. It breaks through and we’re able to soak it up. Bathe in it. Enjoy it... until it fades again. The experience is welcome but fleeting. 

And we’re left wanting more.

We all chase happiness. Sometimes we catch it, but it always gets away again –leaving us to continue the chase. We’ve all done this. You know… those great experiences you have some times. Maybe a party, or a vacation, or a great conversation. Usually it’s a new experience. We do something we’ve not done before and it leaves us happy and content. It gives us something we may not have known we were missing. That special feeling that makes us thankful we took ourselves on that adventure. And it’s a very nice feeling.

So, we’re tempted to try to recreate those moments –in hopes of finding happiness… in hopes of getting that wonderful feeling. 

There have been many times I took a vacation to a place that left me feeling happy and content. But when I’ve gone back to those places… thought I might find some happiness, I usually can’t reach the same levels I’d found there before. Does this sound familiar? We seek the things we associate good feeling with. Think of the first time you tried a food that tasted amazing. Chocolate? 

The things we enjoy; we reach for again. But we rarely find them to be as good the next time around. 

So, I started to wonder why that is. Why is it that I find less joy when I try to recreate an experience that took me there, to that happy place inside?  

Dostoyevsky wrote, “The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness.” 

Many of us miss that lesson. We’re so busy looking for the next ray of sunshine we don’t consider how we might remove the impediments to our moment in the sun. And there’s much in life which stands in the way of more sunshine in our lives. When we learn to recognize the things throwing shade, we can move from under them and enjoy more of the good stuff. And we are often one of the major sources of the shade we find ourselves beneath.

Happiness has much to do with the outcome of our lives. Happiness must be tended to in order to continue to grow. As long as there have been philosophers writing about happiness, great minds have known this truth. Happiness is an inside job. 

Gandhi felt we can determine what grows in the garden of our life, by what we plant in the ground of our thoughts. He said,

“Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, your values become your destiny." -Gandhi

You see, only we can steer our destiny. Think of your life as a boat, which only you should steer. Each of us are the ship captains of our life journey. 

We may be hit by storms, blown about by the winds and effected by any number of things beyond our control. These things are part of the journey. But we are the only ones with a hand on the wheel of our life. We have all the power to steer through the storms. But only if we understand we’re steering the boat. 

When we start to believe we don’t control our life; when we allow our happiness to reside in other people’s actions or words, it’s no different than taking our hands off the wheel. 

And why would you do that?! Do you really expect someone else to steer the course of the greatest adventure of your life? Do you honestly think if you could hand over the wheel that anyone else would care as much as you about the destination of your life? How could they? 

And no one will, unless they’re controlling your life for their own benefit.

Marcus Aurelius had it right.

“Very little is needed to make a happy life. It is all within yourself in your way of thinking.” 

Today, watch your thinking. Plant good seeds of thought  -and watch them grow.