Happiness Is About Me—And No One Else

“Nothing changes until you do.”

Mike Robbins

Deeply engrained in codependent thinking is “everyone else needs to change and it’s my job to see that they do.” God knows that before I entered recovery that was my entire philosophy on life. There was good reason for it. I had been taught from an early age to always look outside myself to find happiness. And finding happiness outside of myself meant that I needed to control life, including everyone and everything.

It didn’t take long to realize that it was easier to control things than it was to control people. And this marked the beginning of my addictively acting out with things. After all, a chocolate chip cookie can’t scream “Don’t eat me!” Food has no power to stop us from over-consuming it as a means of seeking false happiness. The same is true for alcohol or any other substance. Likewise, clothes in department stores can’t stop us from buying them as a false means of alleviating our self-loathing. Controlling things is easy.

And controlling things was always my back-up plan when I wasn’t able to control people. Anytime someone refused to meet my demands or failed to fall prey to my manipulation, I’d turn to things to medicate away the pain caused by the happiness that I so wanted, but that kept alluding me.

Years and years of repeating these same old control patterns, of desperately wanting other people to change so I would be happy, blew past me with no positive results. Still it never occurred to me that maybe I was looking at all of life in the wrong way—until I entered recovery.

Then my eyes were OPENED: No one in this whole world needed to change, but ME!!! And no positive lasting change, no real happiness was ever going to grace my life until I started changing my thought patterns and my patterns of behavior.

Happiness was not something that existed outside of me. Happiness wasn’t something that other people held in the palm of their hands. And happiness wasn’t something that I could snatch or manipulate from them. Happiness also wasn’t in controlling things or using them for emotionally medicating. Happiness was inside of me—and it had always been there. I had just never thought to look to myself to discover my own personal happiness.

Sure enough, after I started attending Codependents Anonymous meetings I started to change my ways of thinking and my patterns of behavior. And, as a result, life became much more pleasant. I became more self-secure, more comfortable in my own skin. I learned to love myself better and my self-esteem improved. My natural personality began to emerge from underneath all of my control tactics that had held it at bay for so long. I was becoming more and more the real me and it felt good. Happiness was arising naturally from within.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that I don’t sometimes lose myself in old ways of thinking and feeling. Sometimes I do still feel the need to fill up some inner-emptiness with another person. And sometimes I use things, like clothes, to make me feel better about myself. But I am aware of what’s going on inside of me and I empathize with my feelings instead of scolding myself for them. I know that my inner-brokenness isn’t fully healed and that’s OK. One day it will be and I am the only person who can make that happen.

That’s why it’s so important to realize that nothing changes for the better in life until we do. Between ourselves, our Higher Power and loyal friends, we have the power to change our lives in positive ways. We are the ones who have to choose to change and we have to do our part. What we cannot do our Higher Power can do for us. And friends are required to do nothing beyond validating our growth and struggles with love and understanding.