Happiness is an inside out journey

​Many of us have built our happiness models upside down. We've come to believe that happiness starts first with the people and the world around us being happy, and then and only then will we find happiness.

As such, in our pursuit of happiness following that model, we spend a lot of energy trying to change the people and the world around us. Change them to reflect something that will look more like our picture of happiness.

I know that model well.

I have lived it.

I lived it plenty long enough to know that not only did I frequently end up unhappy, so did the people and the world around me.

The reasons for that boil down to this: happiness isn't meant to be built, it's meant to be spread. And it isn't meant to spread from outside in, it's meant to spread from inside out.

Much of the world is running around trying to create happiness somewhere out there, when true happiness is discovered somewhere within.

For me, and maybe for you, that discovery centers on three things, really.

Discovering things I need to let go of to make me a happier me.

Discovering things I need to grab hold of to make me a happier me.

Discovering things I need to accept about me that will make me a happier me.

In pursuit of my own happiness this year, I've doubled down on letting go of things I know I need to let go of to make me happier. I've had some habits I'd come to just accept as simply part of who I am, but in deeper reflection last year, I came to discover they are actually habits standing in the way of who I want to become.

Habits standing in the way of my happiness.

As long as I believe the world around me is to blame for my unhappiness, people, situations and circumstances, I tend to hold on to things that are far more the real sources of my unhappiness.

It's one of the most destructive elements of that upside down happiness model.

There are also things I am grabbing hold of this year to make me a happier me. Jesus is certainly at the top of that list. Oh, Jesus has been grabbed hold of most of my life. But mostly in line with that upside down model.

I often turned outward to Jesus when my inside world was falling apart. But truly grabbing hold of Jesus means clinging to him inside me always, while recognizing that inside world is ALWAYS falling apart.

And maybe that's that last piece, the part of coming to accept some parts of me on the way to becoming a happier me.

I am broken. My inside world will always be some form of falling apart. If we're being honest, that is true of all of us.

We've had things done to us in the past, we've done things to ourselves and to others in the past, our past is a destructive force that is always challenging us to undo all of those things that have been done.

Challenging us to remake them.

In many cases, the far bigger challenge isn't undoing anything. It's accepting those broken parts of who we are as, well, parts of who we are.

And maybe we start by not calling them broken parts at all, but parts we can accept and grow from and move toward happiness with.

And we need to know that this commitment to moving toward personal happiness is not a selfish endeavor. Not at all. It's actually a very critical one.

Critical, that is, if you have an interest in spreading happiness to the world around you.

Because the world's happiness is an inside out process, not the other way around. And nothing would make me happier, and likely you, than to one day discover a much happier world.