Want To Be Happier? Try Using One Simple Phrase Everyday
Get unstuck from a state of lacking.
mimagephotography | Canva I came across a letter written to me exactly five years ago today, and I wanted to share it with you:
"I am trying to be happy, but nothing is working. I get up and go to work, but all I feel is heartache and despair. When I am home alone, all I do is miss him and I'm trying so hard not to. It seems the more I try not to do something, the more pain I feel. All I want is to be happy again and feel normal. I wonder if I'll ever find love again. I doubt it."
I must confess I authored that letter.
Yesterday, I was cleaning out my desk and stumbled upon my old dusty journal. Within it was the letter I had written to myself. I was an avid journal writer following my separation and wrote almost daily. It's amazing to re-witness the person I was and marvel at how far I've come.
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I am sharing this personal letter with you for a few reasons. To remind you, I come from a place that is no different from you. I know what it's like to feel some serious pain. I know how hard it is to get over someone. I understand that starting over is confusing. But, what do you think is wrong with this journal letter?
If you answered, "Well, Lindsey, it seems like you're wallowing in your poo," you are right. But what else is wrong here, how should it have been written? It's plain and simple to me now: I had no faith. When you talk to yourself despairingly, all you get is more despair. When you say, "I want," you are claiming that you don't "have," thereby remaining in a state of lack.
Just because I "wanted" to be happy doesn't mean happiness was going to show up. I had to believe happiness was coming to me. I had to have faith that the Universe was going to bring it to me. Why would anything good come to me as long as I kept announcing it wasn't? Once I realized this, my life drastically changed.
In one of my favorite books, Conversations with God, Neal Donald Walsch writes: "Affirmations do not work if they are merely statements of what you want to be true. Affirmations work only when they are statements of something you already know to be true."
No longer did I write about what was done to me. I began to write about what was coming. I began to dream and gave myself permission to accept and receive abundance. I no longer wrote, "I want happiness," but I wrote, "I have happiness." And sure enough, happiness found me.
My dear friend, you cannot receive good when you are focused on the bad. This is what I will continue to teach you until you have mastered this yourself.
What affirmations can you make for yourself, starting today? What do you currently have, not want (even if you don't yet have it)? Go ahead, tell me. This one affirmation is the start of something new. You must trust that it's coming. Have faith.
Lindsey Ellison is a relationship coach and founder of "Start Over. Find Happiness.," a coaching practice that helps people during and after their divorce or breakup.