My journey to happiness began with five words I didn't believe were true.
I was well into my forties when I began to understand what it meant to be truly happy.
It started a couple of months before my father died. I was listening to a conference call with a motivational speaker Marcia Weider. This was before Zoom, when everyone called the same toll-free number and listened together over the telephone.
At one point, the speaker said something very simple.
“Everyone deserves to be happy.”
My immediate thought was, Well, that’s not true.
I don't remember everything else she said that day, but I remember those words. They stayed with me long after the call ended.
Everyone deserves to be happy.
I kept thinking about them. Maybe she was right. Maybe everyone really did deserve to be happy.
And somewhere in that questioning came a much harder realization: deep down, I wasn't happy.
Looking back now, I find it difficult to believe that at that point in my life I didn't think I deserved happiness. But I didn't. I had reached my forties without ever really questioning that belief.
That conference call changed something in me. I became curious.
Over the next couple of months, I ordered the speaker's DVDs and her book. I read as much as I could find. One book led to another, and then another. I discovered new authors, speakers and ideas that challenged the way I had always looked at life.
And then my father died.
I remember sitting around his kitchen table with my sisters after he passed away. At some point, I mentioned that I had been reading about a different way of looking at life—about how much our perspective could affect the way we experienced it.
Barbara was immediately interested.
Over the years that followed, Barbara and I would spend hours philosophizing about life. But in the beginning, this journey was mostly mine. She was the only person I really shared it with. Years later, when we were going through Barbara's things after she died, we found Marcia Wieder's book and DVDs.
I don't know whether I had lent mine to Barbara or whether she had bought her own copies. But I brought them home with me.
I wanted to read the book and watch the DVDs again.
I don't know whether I had lent mine to Barbara or whether she had bought her own copies. But I brought them home with me.
I wanted to read the book and watch the DVDs again.
There were things in those early teachings that I struggled with. Some ideas challenged beliefs I had held for most of my life. Others pushed me far outside my comfort zone. I didn't accept everything I encountered, and I certainly didn't understand everything at once.
But I kept reading.
Over the years, something interesting seemed to happen. The books, teachers and ideas I needed often seemed to find me when I was ready for them. One idea would open my mind just enough for me to consider the next one. As my knowledge grew, so did my willingness to question what I thought I knew.
I developed an almost insatiable hunger to learn.
This wasn't an overnight transformation. It took years—many years. Gradually, though, I began to understand what happiness meant to me.
I began making decisions based on my happiness.
That may sound selfish. There was probably a time when I would have thought it was selfish too. But I came to believe that taking responsibility for my own happiness wasn't selfish at all. I couldn't depend on another person to create it for me, and I wasn't responsible for creating someone else's happiness for them.
We are each responsible for our own.
I also came to understand that taking care of my own happiness made me better able to be there for the people I loved. Taking care of myself didn't mean caring less about others.
Perhaps the biggest thing I learned was that happiness doesn't mean never being sad.
Life didn't suddenly become easy because I had discovered happiness. There have been losses and disappointments. There have been deeply sad times. There have even been periods of depression.
But somewhere beneath all of that, the happiness remained.
It took me a long time to understand how I could be depressed and still know, deep down, that I was happy. Eventually I realized that the two weren't necessarily opposites. Sadness and depression were things I could experience without losing the deeper sense I had developed about my life.
For me, happiness became less about how I felt on any particular day and more about how I chose to see my life. I learned to notice the good. To appreciate what I had. To make choices that were right for me. And to understand that difficult times didn't erase everything that was still good.
It has been many years since that conference call. I can still remember hearing those words—everyone deserves to be happy—and immediately thinking, Well, that’s not true.
I believed it then.
Today, I believe something very different. She was right.
Everyone deserves to be happy.
It just took me well into my forties to believe that included me.
What do you believe you deserve now that you didn't believe you deserved when you were younger?
Something come to mind?
If you'd like to share it, I'd love to hear what this story made you think about.