Find Happiness by Simply Being Yourself!

“Letting someone else decide who we will be, how we will act and what we will feel implies that we have given up our own life in exchange for whatever the other person wants us to be.”

Karen Casey, Codependence and the Power of Detachment

Codependency is the experience of giving up our own lives. We give up who we are, what we like, what we believe, what we feel, what we want and what we need in exchange for the imagined safety of fading into another person. We think that by enmeshing into someone else we will find love, acceptance, happiness and security. We also think that by blurring the line between our identity and the identity of the other person we will gain a sense of respectability, of finally being lovable in the eyes of the world. We couldn’t be more wrong.

We gain nothing—and lose everything-- by enmeshing into another person. No one finds happiness, comfort or love by perpetually trying to please another person. What security is there in never knowing what you are going to have to like, feel, believe or agree to in any given moment? What comfort can we possibly receive from having to give small bits and pieces of ourselves away every time we are forced to deny what we really want and accept what the other person wants instead? How happy can we be when we are always having to bend our values in order to receive scraps of love from someone? And just how loved can we feel when we know that the other person’s love for us is all based on how well we please him or her?

We only find comfort, happiness and love by choosing to accept and respect ourselves just as our Higher Power created us. We find comfort in acknowledging what we really like, believe, feel, want and need. We find happiness in choosing to befriend ourselves despite all of our human faults and failings. And we find love once we choose to give love to ourselves—first and foremost.

No one gains anything by trying to be someone else. Be yourself. According to Oscar Wilde it’s better to be yourself. After all, everyone else is already taken. Once we start liking, respecting and loving who we are everything else will fall into place. We will make new friends and meet new lovers who are attracted to our individual uniqueness—a uniqueness that only we can first cultivate, know and share with the rest of the world. So let’s get to work on being us and allowing our souls to shine before all of the Universe!