You Alone Posses the Power to Be Happy Within Yourself!

“Happiness lies in your own hand.”

Madonna, Secret

Back in 1994, Madonna passed on some great wisdom in her mega-hit single “Secret.” Unfortunately, as much as I liked the song at the time, I didn’t get the message. Or I didn’t want to get it.

I find most people don’t like the idea that happiness is in their own hands. They prefer to think that happiness lies outside of themselves; that it can only be found in the hands of someone else; and that they have to struggle to find that someone who has the power to make them happy.

There’s a romanticism to this idea that a perfect person is going to come along and sweep you away to mythical happiness. Or that some great spiritual guru is going to provide you with the long lost “secret” to possessing authentic lifelong happiness. But there’s no reality to either concept. No one can give you what you already have within your own grasp—within your very hands.

Accepting the fact that happiness lies within our own hands seems too challenging for many people. It means they’re going to have to work at uncovering their own inherent power to being happy. And they don’t want to do that. They want someone else to give it to them. They want what’s nice and easy. Just wave a magic wand over them and make them be happy. The problem  with this formula is that it strips us of all of our own inherent power to be happy in and of ourselves, and places all of that power into the hands of others. This means that we are at the mercy of those people that we have chosen to provide us with the gift of happiness. They are all powerful and we are totally powerless. And once their magic wears off, or they refuse to give us our happiness fix, we’re screwed.

Initially, we may not like the idea of being responsible for our own happiness. Accepting this fact means we have to work on building a new relationship with ourselves. It means we have to look in the mirror everyday and like who we see. It means we have to befriend ourselves and give ourselves the love we have often desperately wanted from others. But as we learn to change in these positive ways, we will discover that happiness truly does exist in the palm of our own hands. We will begin to realize that we do have the power to make ourselves happy, or miserable--- and that the choice is ours to make.

In this new light, we will then see that other people exist to compliment our self-made happiness. And that no one exists purely for the purpose of making us happy. No one person is created to be our puppet on a string; to dance and make us laugh at our every whim. And we don’t exist to be anyone else’s puppet, either.

Own your personal power by being responsible for your own happiness: It truly does lie in your own hand.