It’s Not Your Job To Be Happy
I spent decades thinking it was my job to make myself happy. I was “trained” that way by society and culture (probably as you have been).
The responsibility was exhausting. The guilt for failing at it – almost constant. I wasn’t happy even half the time. And I thought something was fundamentally wrong with me because of it.
Not long ago, I made a switch. And it changed how I show up in my everyday life.
Here’s what I realized. Most people don’t even know what happiness is. Pause for a second. Do you?
Happiness is when your reality meets your expectations. That’s it. And unhappiness is when it doesn’t.
So I asked myself a hard question: Why should reality meet MY expectations?
Think about it. How much of reality do you actually control? Almost none. You can influence a tiny bit. The rest is completely out of your control.
Want proof? Try to have only happy thoughts for an hour. Can’t do it? Exactly. You can’t even control your own thoughts. So how are you supposed to control reality?
You’re a product of Nature. And Nature doesn’t care about your happiness. Why should it? You’re just one expression of it. Your ego cares about being happy. And your ego is the part of you that’s completely disconnected from reality.
The switch I made was simple. But not easy.
From: Living under the tremendous burden and responsibility to make myself happy.
To: Fully accepting that it’s not my job to make myself happy.
What changed? The guilt disappeared. The heavy responsibility dropped away. The feeling that “something is wrong with me if I’m not happy” – gone.
I still get upset. I still have bad days. But the existential anxiety about it is mostly gone. The energy I was dissipating trying to labor towards happiness – I’m not doing that anymore. It’s a relief. Honestly, it’s the most freeing thing I’ve realized in years.
Do I still fail at this? Of course. Sometimes I catch myself judging myself for not being in a better mood or for not being able to control my circumstances. But now I catch it. And I remember: it’s not my job. And I let go.
All emotions are okay. When happiness happens – great. When it doesn’t – also okay.
The video above walks through this in more detail. The thought experiment. The hard question. The switch. And what it actually feels like to drop this burden.