What Even Is a "Good Day?"
What is the word for when someone chooses to rip another to shreds, precisely because that person chooses good days, every day?
Does that make sense to you?
Because if that's what our happiness depends upon -- because we cannot control people and circumstances every single day -- then our happiness will be in the hands of others, won't it? It'll be at the whim of our circumstances.
So, if you really wish to have a good day every day, we've got two things we need to do. So, the first thing that we need to do is we need to stop outsourcing our happiness and outsourcing our unhappiness on the people and circumstances.
In other words, we need to stop attributing our happiness to what's going on externally, and we need to stop blaming others, -- especially blaming others -- for our unhappiness.
So, for as long as we do that, as long as we're making it the job of people and circumstances to make us happy, or as long as we're making it their fault when we're unhappy, our happiness will be very unstable, and illusive.
Our second job is to actively cultivate a source of peace and a source of happiness coming from inside our own mind. So, here's something I want you to commit to memory. Are you ready?
This is another line from one of my teacher's books, where he says,
"Happiness and unhappiness
are states of mind;
and therefore their real causes
cannot be found outside the mind."
Especially, the causes of our suffering are not in those closest to us, whom we most often enjoy blaming for our own internal struggles, in order to avoid facing ourselves.
"Happiness and unhappiness are states of mind; and therefore, their real causes cannot be found outside the mind." So, if we have a peaceful state of mind, we will be happy regardless of people and circumstances. If our mind is unpeaceful or agitated, then even if we have very good circumstances, we'll find it impossible to be happy.
