How To Be Happy? Learn To Be Content

Happiness is something that we all yearn for. It is like an illusive butterfly, it is there for that one moment for us to admire its beauty and perfection. We try to extend our hand to touch it and maybe even gently grasp it, but then, we blink and it is gone. We gasp in surprise, how can this be, I just had it! So fleetingly fast. That is how happiness is; illusive, fleeting, and unable to reach. Why do we continue to fill our voids with happiness? We tend to seek fulfillment, satisfaction, and love and equate this with happiness. It is coined as a something, and that’s the problem it is not a something. It is an attitude, a state of being. Many years ago, I was driven with a passion to find happiness. Obviously, each time I thought it was there, I failed and became even more disillusioned. I was caught in a squirrel cage of despair. One night, I was given the gift of truth. I, by Divine Appointment, sat at a lecture given by an inspirational therapist. The subject was to be on Happiness and I was glued to my seat with all ears and heart opened, mesmerized by this subject matter. I heard all he said but what resonated inside forever were these words: “Happiness is peacefulness and contentedness. You may have peacefulness but not have contentedness, or you can have contentment and not have peacefulness, therefore in that moment you will not have happiness. But when you have both peacefulness and contentment than you will experience happiness. So it is not something you will have all of the time.” What a freedom it was to have that burden removed. I quit looking for happiness, because it is not always going to be there. I was set on wings of freedom. We have to learn and work to cultivate a contented heart.
I listed below the five Rules To Cultivate a Contented Mind and which I include also a contented heart. This is the secret to happiness/contentment. I found the five rules for contentment written by an English clergyman two hundred years ago.

Rules To Cultivate A Contented Mind:
(1) Allow yourself to complain of nothing not even the weather.
(2) Do not imagine yourself to be somewhere other than where you are.
(3) Do not compare your situation with that of anyone else.
(4) Never allow yourself to dwell on wishing this or that had happened. Remember, that God Almighty loves you better and more wisely than you love yourself.
(5) Never dwell on tomorrow. Remind yourself that tomorrow is in God’s hands, not yours.

Pursue and practice contentment.
Lovingly,
Marie