Recently a sweet lady left a comment on my Facebook wall in which she said, “Misti, I love how no matter what life throws at you or how your life circumstances have changed, you always find your happy.” Her comment really resonated with me deeply and inspired me to pen some thoughts regarding how I found “my happy.”
First up, life hasn’t always been this way for me. I haven’t always been happy. I spent a lot of my life feeling like I was in a desert wasteland not really knowing what it was that fulfilled me or made me happy. It has been a journey of me discovering that for myself by having to learn who I am, what my values truly are, and what is important for me to do in order to protect that happiness. I have now learned how to ensure my happiness, but it hasn’t always come easy. It’s come through a sincere spiritual search accompanied by a lot of mistakes and some broken relationships along the way. Today I have grown to respect my happy bubble and have learned how to protect it physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
We guard our happiness by monitoring what we allow ourselves to think about and what emotions we allow into our hearts. I’ve trained myself through spiritual discipline to meticulously filter the voices that I allow inside my head. I renew my mind daily and take thoughts captive that aren’t in alignment with the highest truths. It’s amazing how quickly wrong mindsets can seep through the crevices of our mind. Guarding the heart and mind is a daily routine much like taking a bath. Depending on how dirty we get depends on how often we need to cleanse our bodies. In the same way, depending on how much junk has attached itself to us throughout the day depends on how often we need a spiritual cleaning and renewing of the mind and heart to cleanse away debris. Toxic thoughts or emotions if allowed to sit with us too long create depression, defeat, disease, and ultimately death.
Heal your mind. Heal your heart. Heal your soul. Heal your body. This is the progression of truth.
Emotions are just as harmful as misaligned thoughts. Thoughts that are opposing to divine truths such as ones that limit you, entrap you, diminish your value, or move you away from a heart full of love and forgiveness will always lead to suffering. Emotions are the same. If you allow yourself to carry emotions of sadness, grief, guilt, anger, defeat, entrapment, insecurity, shame, separation, judgment, or fear, your body will eventually try to get your attention. Your body most often serves as a code red alert that something within you is being suppressed or has moved out of spiritual alignment with love and truth. Nothing can get your attention faster than pain or discomfort. As pleasure seeking human beings, when all else failures, Divine Intelligence knows full well a brush with discomfort will most likely work to grab our focus. Thus, count your sufferings as joy because, ultimately, if you will get still and listen, they will teach you something valuable for your soul journey. Doctors write prescriptions to treat symptoms. The Divine Voice within your soul will show you what created your illness or unpleasant circumstance. It will take you to the source or root that caused it to emerge in the first place. It will also lovingly show you how to pluck it out, and replace it with a wisdom and truth that will forbid its return.
So happiness emerges from a space of protection for that which we value, our minds and our hearts. Happiness is also derived from the quality of your environment and the caliber of people you allow in your space. The space around you is scared. Treat it as such. If you’re in a conversation with someone who doesn’t have control over themselves emotionally, and they begin to project their negative energy onto you, take charge of that situation! It’s imperative. I’ve even been known to stop people mid-sentence and say, “I’m sorry. I’m not in a position to have this conversation right now.” I then hang up the phone and mentally move on very quickly.
When you are on a healing journey, you must intentionally protect your space. You’re dealing with enough mastering your own emotions. The last thing you need is to be responsible for trying to balance the emotions of someone who is ridiculously out of alignment. Step away and step away fast. Your happiness and good vibes depend upon it. As a result, it might be a little lonely initially, but I guarantee you the caliber of people that will begin to surround you will be absolutely phenomenal because you will have set higher standards for the quality of souls you interact with on a daily basis. Besides, being alone with yourself is not a bad thing! These are your greatest moments to get to know yourself, fall in love with yourself, experience rapid spiritual growth, and set those amazingly, stunning standards that will uphold you in a position of joy for the rest of your life!
Make maintaining your happy bubble a priority. Protect your atmosphere and make sure the people that you allow in your intimate space are in alignment with your positive mindset and emotional state of being. Until you are strong enough to handle adults behaving like spiritual kindergarteners, keep your distance from those that can trigger you. You need to be around people that can pull you up and not weigh you down. One day you will be able to stand atop the waters and it won’t matter what storm comes against you, what kind of person you’re around, what behavior they are exhibiting at that time, or if they are in vibrational alignment with where you are. You’ll be able to stand on top of the water and take control of the storms raging around and within you. You will be able to handle the person that just insulted you or tried to dump their emotional baggage and drama in your life. You’ll be able to handle their temper tantrums and depressive, negative chatter. There will be a strength that will have cultivated so deeply within you, and you’re happy bubble will be so coated and thick with joy that absolutely nothing can penetrate it. That’s the place we all should seek to obtain; however, until you arrive there and can speak calmly from the eye of the storm, paddle your boat to a different island, Friend. Paddle hard and paddle fast. You may be able to step out of your boat, but you may still need help to stay atop the water when the storm starts raging around you. If this is the case, be incredibly careful with who you align yourself with in those moments, so you don’t sink beneath the waters. And if by chance you do find yourself drowning, no worries. You have a great and mighty Source to come to your rescue! You have the Christ of God, the strength of God inside of you, to lift you from the waters during your sinking moments. Pull from that – several times a day if you must. It will never fail you.
There is a dynamic that must be created in order for you to thrive in your happy place. Just like a plant or animal requires a particular climate to survive along with certain instructions for how to nurture and feed it, so do you! Get to know the kind of environment that is needed for you to grow and shine. Then create the garden of your life to flourish! The wisdom to do this will not come from outside voices. It comes from within you. Don’t place your happiness in the hands of another person. Don’t allow someone else to tell you who they think you are or how they think you should be. Don’t allow them to determine your atmosphere. It is your responsibility to generate that. Don’t allow others to decide or impose what will be planted in your garden. You are the Master Gardener of your life. Be careful who you allow to place something in the garden of your soul and carefully monitor what is being planted. Whatever you put into your field will sprout and grow.
The voice of God sits within the seat of your soul providing you a direct channel for guidance to help you make the choices that will lead to your ultimate happiness and destined path. Trust that voice not the voice of someone else who thinks they know what is best for you. People will try to change you and at times they make attempt to make you into more of what they want you to be in order to selfishly accommodate their needs. Don’t give your power away so easily to someone else’s direction, because there are no better directions than the ones lying with you. No-one knows you like you know you. The biggest mistakes I have ever made in my life have come as a result of betraying my own Internal Guidance System because I trusted someone else to be wiser or perhaps more connected to God than me. I allowed outside pressure and influences to guide my decisions instead of following my Inner Compass.
The true and genuine teacher or guru is going to empower you to trust yourself. The greatest prophets on the planet are the ones that teach you how to connect to your voice, not try to be that voice for you. They will show you how to find answers, not try to provoke dependence or reliance upon them to be the answer for you. They will give you instructions that will strengthen your direct connection to the Divine, not attempt to be the voice of the Divine themselves. True happiness is a result of making this connection for yourself.
In relationships, happiness comes from being in a relationship with someone that loves you as is. This means, in your current state of being, they wouldn’t need to change one thing about you in order for them to be happy. If someone is constantly trying to tweak you or improve you, I have one word of advice for you…next! Seriously, release them to go find someone more suitable and compatible to what they need. You will never be happy partnered with someone that doesn’t see and appreciate you exactly for who you are. A lot of people are trying to find someone exactly like themselves. But it’s our differences that help us evolve and grow as individuals. The person you are with doesn’t have to be identical to you, they just have to adore and love the unique qualities that make you so wonderfully you.
Also, select a partner with enough maturity and passion to continue the reckless pursuit of your heart. Life experiences are going to impact and change you, and if you are committed to your spiritual path, you will evolve throughout your journey. Select intimate partnerships with open minded individuals who have the capacity to allow their love for you to grow as you grow. You will be happier with someone who is committed to continually getting to know you and is open to loving future versions of who you will grow to be. The mark of a true lover is not the one who can capture your heart, but the one that has the ability to continue capturing your heart every day for the rest of your life.
Happiness is not a destination. It is a state of being that you cultivate within yourself. Happiness is a choice you have to make continuously throughout your day as various moments and circumstances present themselves to you. Happiness requires action. At times it will require holding on tightly to something you treasure, and at times it may require letting it go. But make no mistake. Your happiness is everything. If you have children, your happiness is ultimately everything to them as well. It affects your parenting, your mood, your productivity, your creativity, and even your health.
Never make the mistake of equating happiness to worldly success or how well you fit the mold of what society tells you that you should be. Authentic happiness is not based on the amount of money in your bank account or the level of status you have achieved among your peers. For the genuinely happy souls these things stem as a result of the abundance they carry within their hearts. The true happy campers didn’t wait for the world to make them happy. They made a decision to be happy in the midst of their world.
Happiness comes as a result of surrender. It is a detachment from the emotional entanglement of life. It’s an acceptance and contentment for what your circumstances are there to teach you. It’s placing yourself in a river trusting it will carry you exactly where you need to go. Happiness is trust in the Divine. Happiness is willing to be buried in order that you might grow some roots, make your way through the blackness of dirt that has encased you, and rise through the obstacles to find your place in the sun. Your dirt and darkness also provided the nourishment for your growth. Surrender to the process, Little Seedling, and you will emerge as the mighty oak you are destined to become. You will sprout into a tree of life-bearing fruit that will never be barren again.
In my life, I have experienced three near-fatal car accidents and a serious cancer scare that caused me to endure an incredibly painful bone marrow biopsy coupled with a hospital stay that lasted for weeks on an oncology floor. I’ve been through two divorces, a brain aneurysm that left me with neurological damage and an inoperable benign tumor unreachable in the center of my brainstem. I’ve been to the heights of tremendous worldly success, and I’ve been to the utter depths of loss and despair. I’ve walked in on my Mother lifeless in her bed having fallen into her final sleep as a result of a tragic and unexpected heart attack. The latter of all these experiences was by far the most significant blow of my life. My mother was my best friend and the greatest love of my heart, and it was my precious Mother who taught me that happiness was a choice. She taught me how to rise. She also taught me that there would be times I would have to put up a sincere fight for my happiness. After her death, I learned that by my surrender to what the Divine had mapped out for my life, I was making a declaration for my ultimate peace and contentment. I decided to allow for my breaking and to place myself in the hands of God yielded to the journey that was ordained for the cultivation of my soul. My surrender was my fight for something real. Soul prosperity became my ultimate destination, and my happiness is a result of this noble quest.
You can be happy when your circumstances tell you that you should be sad. You can experience contentment and even joy when your journey is giving you loss and defeat. It takes a higher wisdom, a spiritual strength, and an eagle’s eye view – something available to us all. It requires appreciating that our circumstances are in our lives to teach us valuable lessons that are of great worth to the soul. It takes a sincere cry of the soul for help. I cried for something bigger than me to help me. My cry wasn’t for fame, fortune, a career, or success. My cry was to feel God, to be close to His heart, to feel love, and to become as much of that love as I possibly could become in this life. I knew in my soul this would be my ultimate happy place, and it is. Arriving at genuine happiness required a realization that this God I was crying out to touch me was within my own heart, and I could feel him continuously and endlessly.
You may go through things that are simply awful, but the more you rise and wash your face from the heart breaking moments of your life, and you pull from the Divine Source within you, you will be empowered and strengthened to keep going. You will keep standing. You will even find yourself sprinting, and at times, you will even soar! That Source is as a life-giving Fountain that can nourish and strengthen you to endure whatever you’ve been given to face. It’s your superpower! It does not just fill you. It’s not coming form outside of you. It’s a spark that is ignited within you. You have housed the power all along, Dorothy. Click your heels and go home! You can release that Source without measure over yourself, over others, and over the circumstances of your life.
This Internal Spirit will be with you in the darkest most lonely, defeating moments, and it will empower you to not just heal from those situations though the external stimuli of this outer world. It will heal you via a Source that carries true Divine Power. In place of the bottle of wine which provided you with an escape, it will give you a peace that allows you to be fully present. And not just broken and present, not just hurting and present, but present and filled with inexplicable contentment and tranquility. You will no longer need the roll around in the sheets with that guy that gives you temporarily validation and significance but ultimately leaves an even deeper void and a greater sense of feeling completely alone. This Spirit will teach you your worth. It will set your standards immensely high. It will give you your own bubble of happy to surround you and protect you from those who would wish to burst it.
There is a reason in meditation the ancients advised us to focus on our breathe. However, we shouldn’t just focus on our breathe, we should feel our breathe. This is the Breathe of Life which pulsates through your entire being. This is the Divine Spirit empowering you to live. This is the Breathe of God. When you focus on it, you are reminded of who you are. You are reminded of where you came from, and this my Friends, will help you find your happy.
Your happy is an inner kingdom that’s always been waiting for you. There is a power in you with a knowledge that will unlock the mysteries of life for you. It can help you sort out the chaos of your mind. In can put the crazy of your life into perfect divine order. It’s stronger than you could ever imagine, and it’s there for you – endlessly, without conditions or limitations. The whole Universe truly does have your back. It has the power to make you happy when, according to life circumstances, you shouldn’t be.
One of the most empowering moments we can achieve in our life is when we can learn triumph and true happiness in the midst of sorrow, grief, failure, discontentment, guilt, or embarrassment. When we can love and care for ourselves in those defeating moments, we learn the unconditional love of God.
The people that inspire me the most are not those who are blissful and happy from having lived a life free of struggle. They are also not the people who live in a sense of despair and darkness from having experienced a difficult life. The people that move me and have the ability to touch my heart on the most profound levels are those that have been broken and who have fought through tremendous setbacks yet are still smiling from their soul in sincere genuineness. Those that have been knocked on their face from the blows of life and are rising beautifully from those ash heaps are the true heroes in my book. They are the ones that have allowed the hard moments of their life to cultivate a spirit of grace and ease within them. They have utilized their struggles to find their inner strength, discover who they are, and are now using their voices to inspire and make a difference in their homes and communities. They are using the low moments of their life to help others rise strong. These are the people that carry the stories of victory that impact and speak to me on a transformative level.
Create your happy. Allow for your happy. Protect your happy. Utilize your happy to love and serve the world around you. The more we surrender and align our perspective with higher truths when things aren’t so happy in our lives, the more our physical reality will begin to match our inner spiritual reality. As within so without. The more valiant the effort to align ourselves emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, the closer we will be to authentic happiness and soul prosperity. When you discover who you are and what makes you genuinely happy, fight to protect that. Respect yourself enough to walk away from anything that no longer serves you, grows you, or makes you happy. Release or realign things. Speak up for yourself. Empower others to do the same. Love is freedom. Live in a state of loving others enough to let go of control and allow them to also find their happiness. If necessary, set them free to do so. Ultimately, how happy you are will determine how effective you are in living your destined path to uniquely love and serve those around you, and is this not the ultimate goal for us all?
Love thy neighbor AS THYSELF. You should go and love yourself. You should go and find your happy.
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