We Have the Power to Make Ourselves Happy!

I spent the last two weeks of October on vacation in Los Angeles. Every year I go and spend time with my roller-coaster buddy, and I was expecting to do the same this time; but it didn’t work out that way. When I arrived, I learned that he would only be available to me for a day. Before recovery, I would have gone into a terrible tailspin at this point. The fatalist in me would have been devastated and the victim in me would have taken over immediately:

“Oh, woe is me! My whole vacation is ruined before it’s even started! Nobody loves me! I might as well go back home! Boo hoo, boo hoo, boo hoooooooooooooooooooo!”

But it didn’t happen that way this time. Sure I was initially disappointed and I allowed that disappointment to be present. But I was also aware of my expectations and I wasn’t about to give my personal power away to them or the disappointment. Sure, I expected that my friend should be available to me. But I no longer allow such expectations to spoil my happiness. After allowing myself to feel the initial disappointment, I told myself that there are many people I know in L.A. that I can contact, get together with and have fun with. And I told myself that I can also have a good time by myself if I choose to do so.

And that’s exactly how things played-out. I spent two weeks having a good time with friends I wouldn’t normally have seen and I spent a few days just having fun by myself. There was no moping, no playing “poor, pitiful me” and there were no bad days.

One morning my car wouldn’t start and even that didn’t spoil my demeanor or my day. I simply called Triple A, they checked out the car and determined that the battery was dead. I said “Yank it out and replace it with a new one. I have places to go and people to see!” And all was well.

What a difference recovery makes! Ten years ago, five years ago, even two years ago, I would have been miserable the entire two weeks of my vacation. And it would all have been self-inflicted misery that I chose to heap upon myself. But no more.

Every day we can choose to retain our personal power by refusing to give it away to other people or to our own expectations of how things should be. Once we decide we’re “good enough,” we don’t have to have someone else be around to “make us happy;” something they can’t really do anyway. We have the power to make ourselves happy. It’s our choice. And I’m living proof. It was the best vacation I ever had—even though it didn’t work out the way I had originally planned.