You Really Do Not Need Anything To Be Happy
Breaking through the illusion of desire
You are constantly delaying your happiness until a later date due to a never-ending list of desires.
You tell yourself, “When I get that house, I will be happy”, or “When I get that girl, I will be happy”.
The sad part about this mindset is that these “needs” never end.
Once you get that house or girl, a new need replaces it. Your desires continue.
Believe it or not, this is all an illusion.
In reality, you do not need anything to be happy.
The temporary satisfaction
If I’m being honest, I know how satisfying it can be to finally achieve that goal, to get what you always wanted.
When I first drove my new Porsche off the lot, I was so happy.
The feeling of the steering wheel, how it stuck to the road, and the sound. Even the seat belts were incredibly satisfying.
Every time I got behind the wheel, I smiled.
But it didn’t make me a happier person.
When I drove my car, I was distracted from life’s desires. But these desires still made me miserable.
I thought about how much happier I would be when my new business was established, when my girlfriend would move in with me, or when I could go on that trip.
These new desires continued to arise.
Eliminating desires
It is nearly impossible to eliminate desires. They arise simply because you are human.
The thing is, though, the more you understand them, the more you can control them.
If you can learn to control them, they no longer delay (or tarnish) your happiness.
Ask yourself, “Why does this desire exist?”
It really comes down to the fact that you are not happy with the present. You do not have peace with where you are now.
You want to see things continue to get better. You have a need for progress.
If you continue to go down this rabbit hole and continue to ask yourself “why?”, you slowly start to realize that this “need” is never-ending.
The only way out is to make peace with your mind.
You need to accept desires as a reality and diminish your reliance on achieving them.
Finding peace now
Are you able to find peace when you close your eyes and sit with yourself? What happens when you try?
Does your mind tell you that you should be working? Or maybe it is reminding you about your giant to-do list?
All of these things your mind is constantly bickering about don’t really matter at the end of the day.
If you don’t work, work won’t get done, but you will still be here. The world does not end if you take a day off.
As long as your mind goes off in silence, you will not find peace in the now.
This bickering is your mind’s desires trying to control you.
Let the mind make its noise. You do not have to react to it.
Listen to it the same way you would listen to cars driving by, the ocean splashing, or a bird in a tree.
It’s just noise.
If you can truly turn your internal dialogue into noise, you will find peace now.
The nothingness
The interesting part is that to find this peace, you needed absolutely nothing.
A promotion didn’t cause it, you didn’t get a new house, and the girl of your dreams is still only in your dreams.
You found peace because you turned everything into nothing.
The illusion that desire causes is that you need something. The only way to eliminate that is to let yourself see through it.
When you do, you will be happy.
Thanks for reading