Do you deserve happiness? Think carefully before you answer, for you surely condemn yourself if you answer “No” or “Yes”!
The transformation in my client Paul from session one to session six was truly miraculous. When I first met Paul he was exhausted, demoralized, cynical and dispirited. Now, he was radiant, lively, optimistic and happy. I decided to ask Paul one of my favorite questions: “Paul, what would you say is the most important lesson you have learned about happiness?”
Paul paused. He did not speak for a full two minutes or so. Then he smiled. “Well,” he said, “in my twenties, I worked so damned hard in the hope I’d be happy in my thirties. In my thirties, I saved up everything and struggled everyday so that I might be happy in my forties. In my forties I sacrificed everything and started all over again so that I would be happy in my fifties. Now that I’m in my fifties, I’m not falling for that trick again!”
“So what was the lesson I asked?” I asked.
“All my life I have tried to deserve happiness,” said Paul, “I have always promised myself that ‘one day, soon’ I would be able to afford to rest, relax and take it easy. But after thirty years of hard slog, I found myself still waiting for that ‘one day, soon’ to arrive. That’s why I came to see you. I had grown tired of waiting for happiness, and of trying to deserve happiness. Now, I realize you don’t have to deserve happiness, you just have to choose it.”
Here is a wonderful key to happiness: to be happy, give up the belief you must deserve happiness. Deserving is treacherous. The idea you have to deserve happiness is born from guilt and unworthiness, and guilt is hell. Indeed, the moment you believe you must deserve happiness you condemn yourself to a life of hell in which you struggle, sacrifice, strive and judge yourself constantly.
To have to deserve happiness is to deny happiness is your essence. Do we insist a rose must deserve its own fragrance, the sun its own light, the ocean its water? No! Happiness is natural; and we require no Trojan horse to be happy. One of my favorite affirmations of The Happiness Project is, I delight in the knowledge that all the happiness I experience is thoroughly non-deserved! Here is great truth!
The words “you don’t deserve happiness” are not, therefore, a message of doom and gloom; they are a message of hope. Deserving is unnecessary. It is an illusion. The key to happiness is you don’t deserve to be happy, you decide to be happy. Your decision is the key. In my favorite book, A Course in Miracles, there is a meditation in Lesson 190 I Choose the joy of God instead of pain. It reads:
Lay down your arms, and come without defense into the quiet place where Heaven’s peace holds all things still at last. Lay down all thoughts of danger and of fear. Let no attack enter with you. Lay down the cruel sword of judgment that you hold against your throat, and put aside the withering assaults with which you seek to hide your holiness. Here will you understand there is no pain. Here does the joy of God belong to you. This is the day when it is given you to realize the lesson that contains all of salvation’s power. It is this: Pain is illusion; joy, reality. Pain is but sleep; joy is awakening. Pain is deception; joy alone is truth. And so again we make the only choice that ever can be made; we choose between illusions and the truth, or pain and joy, or hell and Heaven. (W, 362)
To be happy, choose happiness. To be peaceful, choose peace. To be free, choose freedom. Deserving is guilt in another guise, and therefore is useless. So, wipe the word “deserve” from your vocabulary. And teach no one that they deserve happiness or anything else. And when you are happy, think not, “What did I do to deserve this?” Pray, rather, “Dear God, thank you!” Gratitude enables receiving – effortless receiving. Gratitude is an affirmation – it attracts what it focuses on. Gratitude is enough.
First published in “The Miracle Worker” 1996, article by Robert Holden
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