""Will your technique work?"

"Will your technique work?"  The man in the back of the room asks tentatively.  He's a little worried about getting too invested in this class.  He's tried several before this one, and they haven't worked out.  He doesn't want to waste his time in this weekend class if it is only going to be another one of those workshops.  He will just walk out.  Maybe it would be money wasted, but at least he wouldn't be wasting his weekend.

"Only if you do," responds the instructor.  He looks at the class and says honestly, "I am not here to give you easy answers.  I will not give you solutions that will mean your happiness the minute you walk out of the room this afternoon.  I will give you things to think about, a series of steps that my experience has shown me will help you find your place of happiness.  But, and this is a big but," he pauses for a breath, "You have to do the hard work required.  A weekend course with a few hours of instruction will help you find the path, but it won't make you take that first step or the one after that."

I am listening to this lecture series on CD.  I am not a part of the physical class, but the topic of the lecture series interested me.  It is about finding your life's work, when your calling doesn't seem to fit into the traditional career mold.

This conversation occurs within the first 20 minutes of the lecture.  I haven't gotten past it yet.  I hit stop on the CD and spent a long time thinking about this.

At one point in my history, I read a ton of self-help books, and looked at possibly reading a ton more all because I wanted to find the key to happiness.  I wanted quick, easy answers that would tell me how to unlock my heart and let me remove my mask.  I wanted something, someone to tell me the secret.

I read techniques about manifesting abundance.  I read techniques on prayer.  I answered questionnaire after questionnaire on my personality, my deepest desires, my spirituality, my physical fitness, my intelligence.  I looked at all the pop psychology and thought I understood who I was.

I didn't.

I am convinced that every single method out there can work.  There are a million and five different ways to unlock my happiness.  And any one of the methods I read about would place me on the path to finding my happiness.  But I had to do the walking.  I had to take the hike.  I had to climb the mountain.  I had to do the work.

As soon as I was ready to do the work necessary to look for my happiness, nothing could stop me.  In the two years since I really made the commitment to do the work, I have taken steps toward following my call to ministry, I have followed through on dreams of returning to school, I have found myself being happy.

It was a road that that required me to make active changes in my life.  I had to...

Is that a hand I see back there?  Yes, do you have a question?

But haven't you said before that happiness comes when you accept yourself and who you are?  If that is the case, why did you need to make changes?

What a great question.  I had to make changes because I was NOT living true to myself and who I am.  I was living to a standard of life that didn't make sense to me.  Accepting living to that standard wouldn't be accepting me.  I had to change my life and release those things that were holding me back.

Let me offer an example of what I mean.  I had gone to graduate school, gotten a degree in environmental engineering.  From the time I was young everyone told me I was an engineer.  The two long-term jobs I have held after graduation have done little to make me feel good about my status as an engineer.  I felt like being an engineer was all wrong for me.  I was less than thrilled with the work I did.  I dreaded going into do my job.  I was not doing work that was true to me.

To accept who I am in this case, means changing my life to be true to who I am at my core.  I wasn't happy with my job.  I wasn't happy with where I was.  Not because I wasn't accepting that my job and where I was in it is who I am, but because I was failing to accept who I am and go for a career that I would love.

So yes, I believe that one should accept themselves and be true to who they are.  That is not the same thing as accepting what they have and pretending that is who they are.

Now, where was I.  Oh yes.  I was talking about making active changes in my life.

Looking deep in to my soul I realized that I was unhappy with where I was in my life.  That unhappiness had very little to do with anything outside of myself.  The biggest problem I had was that I was not owning my life.  I had abdicated responsibility for my happiness to someone else.  It was someone else's job to ensure that I was happy.  My husband had to do it, my boss had to do it, my friends had to do it, the people selling me junk I didn't need had to do it.  Someone, somewhere had to be responsible for me being happy.  And when it didn't work.  When I wasn't happy it was their fault.  They failed.  That is what I told myself anyway.

The first key to happiness is to realize that you cannot abdicate the responsibility for your happiness on to someone/something else. 

Yes, you are raising your hand again.  Do you have another question?

Not really a question, a comment.  I am not stupid.  I know that I am the only one who can take charge of my life and I am the only one that can make me happy.  Every self-help book on the market tells me that.  I get that.  Stop talking to me like I am a fool.

Hmmm...why are you here then?  If you know that you have to own responsibility for your own happiness, what do you need me to tell you?

I need to know how I can make me happy.  You need to tell me how I can do that.

What happens when you leave here and you are not happy?  Do you decide that you have wasted your time?  Do you decide that I am full of shit?  That maybe I don't know what I am talking about?  That perhaps I am foolish and maybe even out to swindle you?

If that is how you feel...then maybe you need to consider that perhaps, you have put the responsibility for your happiness onto me.  I am not making you read my blog.  The authors of the self-help books are not forcing you to buy their works.  The people running seminars and counseling sessions are not pushing you into giving them your money for their own sense of security and well being. 

You have chosen to read this blog.  You have chosen buy the self-help books.  You have chosen to go the counseling and seminars.

If you get nothing out of it besides resentment that you are not yet "happy," perhaps that is because you have yet to own your responsibility for your actions.

Every choice you make, is yours.  Even if it is "going with the flow."  It is your decision to "just be polite."  It is your choice, "to not make waves."  It is your decision to "blend into the wood work."  Society may have rules, but it is your decision to follow them.

Yes, breaking rules has consequences.  And you have to own responsibility for those too.   When you do something wrong, you have to accept responsibility for the consequences that arise.

Just imagine if everyone accepted responsibility for their actions, their choices.  How much different would the world be?

If we owned our choices and the consequences rather than trying to place them on something/someone else...what would the world look like?

I'm not saying that bullying would stop.  I don't think we would have world peace.  Not in a short time anyway.  But as more people really stop to think about their choices and stop to consider how their choices impact their lives and the lives of those around them, rather than just making choices to "fit in."   How many people would find themselves happier.

Do you think the bully beating the snot out of the homosexual kid in the school parking lot is happy?  Do you think he likes himself?  Seems pretty doubtful.  Unless he is some form of psychopath, most happy people don't really feel the need to beat the crap out of someone for kicks.

Have you ever met someone who was at peace with themselves and happy with their life, who intentionally hurt someone else?

I haven't.

The first step to true happiness, is doing the really hard work, to owning the responsibility for your own happiness.  And that means owning the responsibility that you have to do the hard work involved to get there.