Self

Want To Be Happy? Try Using This One Simple Phrase Everyday

How To Be Happy: Use This One Easy Phrase To Find Happiness

I came across a letter written to me exactly five years ago today, and I wanted to share it with you:

"I am trying to be happy but nothing is working. I get up and go to work but all I feel is heartache and despair. When I am home alone, all I do is miss him, and I'm trying so hard not to. It seems like the more I try not to do something, the more pain I feel. All I want is to be happy again and feel normal. I wonder if I'll ever find love again...I doubt it."

Who do you think authored that letter?

I must confess, it was me.

Yesterday I was cleaning out my desk, and I stumbled upon my old, dusty journal. Within it was the letter I had written to myself. I was an avid journal writer following my separation and I wrote almost daily. It's amazing to re-witness the person I was, and marvel at how far I've come.

I share this personal letter with you for a few reasons. First, to remind you that I come from a place that is no different from you. I know what it's like to feel some serious pain. I know how hard it is to get over someone. I understand that starting over is confusing. But for those of you who know me and who have coached with me, what do you think is wrong with this journal letter? How should it have been written?

If you answered, "Well, Lindsey, it seems like you're wallowing in your own crap," you are right!

But what else is wrong here? It's plain and simple to me now: I had no faith. You see, when you talk to yourself despairingly, all you get is more despair. When you say the words, "I want," you are claiming that you don't "have," thereby remaining in a state of lack. 

Just because I "wanted" to be happy doesn't mean happiness was going to show up.

No, I had to believe that happiness was coming to me. I had to have faith that the Universe was going to bring it to me. Why would anything good come to me as long as I kept announcing that it wasn't?

Once I realized this, my life drastically changed.

In one of my favorite books, Conversations with God, Neal Donald Walsch writes:

"Affirmations do not work if they are merely statements of what you WANT to be true. Affirmations work only when they are statements of something you already KNOW to be true."

No longer did I write about what was done to me. I began to write about what was coming. I began to dream, and I gave myself permission to accept and receive abundance. I no longer wrote, "I want happiness," but instead I wrote, "I have happiness."

And sure enough, happiness found me.

My dear friend, you simply cannot receive good when you are still focused on the bad. This is what I will continue to teach you, until you have mastered this yourself.

What affirmations can you make for yourself, starting today? What do you currently have, not want (even if you don't yet have it)? Go ahead, tell me. Email me and tell me what's coming to you. I want to hear it!

This one affirmation you share with me today is the start of something new. You must trust that it's coming. Have faith!

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