The Ingredient To Happiness

For those of you who don’t watch ‘How I Met Your Mother’ there’s a character named Barney who is a legend. In the story Barney is somewhat of an enigma, and he is known as being a bit of a womanizer.

In one of the episodes he meets an ex girlfriend, who now has a son, and everyone thinks that he is unhappy because he could have been a dad, but he corrects everyone saying he is very happy because his life consists of cigars, suits, money and one night stands. I’m not saying that these four things are the ingredients to happiness, but for Barney they were.

So let’s deal with the thought provoking part of this blog first. What is happiness? I suppose happiness is actually contentment, because wherever one is found, so is the other. Here’s how I see it: certain things in life fall into the category of ‘Eternal Struggles’, these things include financial contentment, success, happiness as well as a few other things I can’t thing of right now. Here’s a scenario from a book entitled “The Richest Man in Babylon” by George Clason.

The Richest Man in Babylon assembles a bunch of people from all walks of life, beggars, merchants and princes, and asks all of them to stand if anyone has extra money lying around to spend. You assume that the beggar would stay seated, along with a few of the merchants and you expect that the princes would immediately stand. But this is not the case, and you find out that not a single person stands. The Richest Man then makes the point that the key to having money is spending less than you earn, and that it has nothing to do with how much money you may or may not have (beggar versus prince).

So if it has nothing to do with your current situation then it must be a state of mind, or rather a way of thinking. The truth is that no amounts of money will ever ensure that you don’t need more money, because it’s very easy to spend money irrespective of how much there is. And when your money runs out, you’ll want more.

In the same manner, happiness has nothing to do with your situation but rather a state of mind, and so does success, as well as my striving to be the best. I guess I just need to become content with the fact that as long as I’m doing my best, I am the best.

So are you waiting for happiness, or are you content to let it evolve? Are you constantly broke, or are you learning how to be mostly fine all the time? These are questions that can’t be answered overnight simply because the answers need to be experienced and lived rather than spoken and debated, but the journey is part of the destination…

Now that we’ve dealt with the more serious part, here’s the more fun part. Everyone has a picture of themselves in the future, as a happy person. And that picture always has specific elements in it that you assume would make you happy. Now my question is what are those elements, and how are you going to get them into your life?

For me those elements are as follows:
> Good friends
> Financial independence
> YHVH / studying the Word
> Owning my own mixing room, and working as an engineer, mixer and producer as well as producing a large number of different bands from different genres
> Writing and enjoying music ranging from big band jazz and blues, through to thrash metal, also including a full orchestral composition.

More on these tomorrow, but until then think about the elements in your life / future