Ten Important ‘Yes, Buts…’ of Happiness to Keep in Mind

Ten Important ‘Yes, Buts…’ of Happiness to Keep in MindBy
Bill Cottringer

“The good ole days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems.” ~Billy Joel.

The path to the most rewarding things in life always seem to be singular, but they do have some “yes, but…” side paths that have to be discovered, understood and traveled past. Here are 10 such “yes, buts…” involving the singular path to the most rewarding object for us all— happiness :

1. YES, happiness is the most common pursuit for us all; BUT that is where the commonness of happiness ends because we all define and experience it in our own personal ways that are not easy to communicate to ourselves let alone others.

2. YES, we all have different approaches to happiness at least until we find it; BUT the differences are what make up the failures on our way to discovering the common path to true happiness, by realizing the rules have already been established.

3. YES, we all want our cake and eat it too by having happiness and avoiding unhappiness; BUT you can’t actually get there until you accept the reality that you can’t and that is very hard catch-22 to accept, given our rebellious human nature.

4. YES, you have to accept both happiness and unhappiness before you can have your cake and eat it too; BUT that is always much easier said then done, until you figure out what you think you know isn’t always so, mainly this limiting perspective.

5. YES, most things are easier said then done; BUT that statement itself is much easier said then undone and not always true, and accepting that reality is easier done than unsaid.

6. YES, figuring out how to actually do something that you think is easier said then done is very difficult; BUT it is the thinking about the doing that makes it so tangled up and difficult to unravel.

7. YES, you have to experience both happiness and unhappiness—usually in their most painful or joyful extremes—before you know the real difference; BUT that is an unavoidable painful process that is hard to understand, have patience with and accept, especially when you are going through it.

8. YES, we all have this common pursuit of happiness and travel our own paths to get to it; BUT we never really make progress until we realize we really don’t have it because our personal paths aren’t getting us there, mainly because we aren’t clear enough about what happiness is and what choices do and don’t get it.

9. YES, happiness is easier to recognize and appreciate when we compare how we are doing against others in this common pursuit; BUT that is an endless chase until we change our outward focus to an inward one and begin closing our own gaps between what happiness we have and what we are doing to get it to what happiness we really want and actually do what we need to do to get it.

10. YES, these ten “yes-buts” are true translations from the trenches and will help in decreasing unhappiness and increasing happiness; BUT they don’t mean anything in the real world until you experience the things in life that help you realize the crucial connection between the free will choices you are presently making on your personal path to happiness and the successful single-minded destiny of true happiness that waits us all as the grand prize of life.