Do we place happiness with a yearning for what we don’t have?, known as conditional happiness.

For example…I’ll be happy when I graduate, I’ll be happy when I get a promotion, I’ll be happy when this diet works, I’ll be happy when I receive an inheritance…etc.

These examples are known as “Conditional Happiness”.

Ryan Holliday writes this on Conditional Happiness; “Like the horizon, you can walk for miles and miles and never reach it. You won’t even get any closer. Eagerly anticipating some future event, passionately imagining something you desire, looking forward to some happy scenario – as pleasurable as these activities might seem, they ruin your chance at happiness here and now. Locate that yearning for more, better, someday and see it for what it is: the enemy of your contentment. Choose it or your happiness, the two are not compatible”.

The take away on this?

Be content with today, find happiness in not the scenarios you yearn, find it in your attitude and actions in life everyday. Happiness isn’t a circumstance, it is your attitude, your decisions, your gratitude for what you do have, your daily action and interactions, the environment you create.