Well, Black Friday just passed along with all the horror stories of people caught in traffic jams on the Long Island Expressway at 1:30 a.m. while trying to get to the Tanger Outlet all night sale after Thanksgiving. Can you imagine how important shopping has become that we're willing to wait in traffic at the end of the island to get to a sale? I guess I can't blame anyone for wanting to get to a good sale, but are they that important that you're willing to wait in traffic in the middle of the night?
What I'm getting at is how our values have changed over the years. Not only have we become a consumer country, we're also a service country. Everybody is doing something for somebody else rather than everybody doing things for themselves. Nobody seems to be able to do anything for themselves any longer.
While I'm writing this, I'm listening to the new Eagles album and there's a song by Don Henley about the Last Grasp of the Big Picture and it reminds me of how we seem to have lost any idea of what's really important to us anymore. We all seem to be caught up in with the next thing we can buy or where we can go to enjoy ourselves, instead of simply enjoying ourselves where we already are. Enjoyment comes from within. You know that old adage that you can be alone in the middle of a crowd. Well, you can be unhappy in the middle of a resort on Tahiti or Hawaii. Happiness comes from within - not outside of you. Certainly it helps to surround yourself with nice things and nice people and nice places, but that's not what makes for happiness. You make it happen.
"If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife," is an old song that is also consistent with this concept. As if your happiness comes from your wife and not from within yourself. It's not surprising that we've come to think this way in light of all the negative education we've received over the years. We have actually come to think that we can't find happiness without someone to love, so that we can be loved back. You know that old Seinfeld episode where George says "I love you" for the first time to his new girlfriend and she doesn't say it back to him. The resulting havoc was hysterical, but it was based upon things that really happen to most of us. In truth, when you say "I love you," it's a statement about how you feel about another and has nothing to do with them. Whether they return the feeling or not is immaterial to how you're feeling. But most of us have confused this just as we've confused many things over time. Things like happiness coming from within rather than outside of ourselves.
Today is the first day of the rest of your life and the first day in which you can say to yourself, "I can be happy - no matter who loves me or what happens to me." Once you get that down, the rest will come easily.
In order to do this, all you have to do is discover/notice what it is that's making you less than happy in your life. If you feel like you're not getting what you want in life, then simply acknowledge that "fact" and tap on it. It might sound something like these:
"Even though I'm not getting what I want in life, I love and accept myself."
"Even though I never get what I want in life, I love and accept myself."
"Even though I can never get what I'm entitled to in life, I love and accept myself."
"I'm never happy with what I have and I never get what I want, yet I love and accept myself nonetheless."
"How can I be happy when I never get what I want out of life? Yet, I love and accept myself fully and completely nonetheless."
Now, develop wordings that are specifically about you and how you feel about life. Do it without judgment. Just notice how it is that you feel about how unfair life is to you and how difficult it is for you and why you feel so slighted by life itself. Then put those feelings into words similar to those above and start the tapping sequences again. Soon, you'll notice that you can't access those thoughts any longer and you're feeling much better than you expected to feel. Notice how those feelings evolve and how you eventually feel and appreciate how you've changed. Its subtle, so be watchful or it could elude you.
