Mindfulness

Being happy with yourself: why happiness must come from within

For this blog, we will get straight to the point.

No long intro, just a simple question you may have to think about.

Here it comes…

When are you truly happy with yourself?

When you have enough work?
When your house is tidy?
When you get more recognition for what you do at work?
When your children are happy?
When you earn enough to do what you want to do?

Consider these options. Notice how they all have 1 common denominator? Feel free to read them again.

Living from the outside in

Have you found what they all have in common?

The options above all contain external factors: your work, your children, your household… Yet the question is about your internal happiness.

Isn’t it strange that we let our internal happiness depend on our environment?

This is actually easily explainable. After all, we are all used to looking at the various ‘actors’, storylines and circumstances in our lives to determine how happy we are with ourselves. “If my kids didn’t make a mess of the house for once, the laundry and ironing were done and the garden fence finally got a new coat of paint, I would feel a lot better.”

Do you recognise yourself in this example? Then you, like many others, are living from the outside in. That means you let the outside world determine how you feel and how happy you are with yourself.

The result? You are constantly busy creating the right circumstances: tidying your house, making an extra effort at work, going to a theme park with the kids, … All to make sure the environmental factors match your expectations, because if they don’t, you’ll get frustrated and feel bad.

The consequences of living a life focused on your environment

You may already feel it coming, but letting your happiness depend on your environment can cause you to:

  • struggle to keep many balls in the air,
  • putting others’ needs before your own,
  • pay little attention to yourself, what you need and want in life,
  • always letting your happiness depend on your environment,
  • and so on…

This constant search for happiness often leads to chronic stress, burn-outs, depression or other psychological (and possibly physical) complaints in the long run.

“Will I never be completely happy then?”, we hear you think.

Of course!

Turn your happiness around: live from the inside out

What if you don’t let your happiness depend on others, environmental factors or the outside world? You don’t have to look that far for your happiness, because you can find it simply within yourself.

By living from the inside out, you pay attention to yourself in the first place. Self-care. You reflect on who you really are and draw love and strength from the relationship with yourself instead of from external factors.

Imagine not having to look for happiness in your surroundings anymore. That you are just a complete human being because you carry everything inside you: love, strength, wisdom and freedom. And everything else your environment has to offer is a nice bonus, but does not determine how you feel or how happy you are with yourself.

It may not seem like it now, but deep inside you know this experience. By getting in touch with this part of you, you will discover what you have to offer the world. Just because it belongs to you and not because you want to get something in return. That is living from the inside out.

How can you be happy with yourself?

Inside, outside. Outside, inside. Making the switch is not that easy. Especially if you have been stuck in the same pattern for several years.

So how can you reverse the movement?

By taking time for yourself and getting in touch with who you really are. By making yourself visible. By believing in your true self and trusting yourself more and more. To do so, you will first have to acknowledge your dependence on your environment in order to then transform it.

Are you tired of your environment having such an effect on your mood? Would you like to learn to live from the inside out? Yoga, meditation or other therapies can help you in this quest. And coaches like Cindy can guide you through this journey. So contact us. Together we can find your ultimate happiness within yourself.

We often find our destiny
in the path we take to avoid it

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Kind regards,

Cindy.

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