Note to Self

Note to Self

You could be happy.

Right now.

You could be.

If you changed nothing about the circumstances of your life, you could be happy. Exceedingly, wonderfully happy.

You just have to stop resisting. Stop pushing what could be happiness away. Hedging your bets on some future that can never arrive because all you have is right now. The present. The future is just a word for the present moment at another time. It never exists.

Let the tension out of your shoulders. Breathe. Take stock of what you have – things you always take for granted – they’ll be gone one day. There is so much right now but you are so focused on what could be that you do not realize what is.

Resisting the present causes unhappiness. Did you know that? It’s good to have aspirations and goals. But if you need these aspirations and goals to be fulfilled in order to become happy, then you never will me. It’s an endless treadmill. That’s what the future is. An endless treadmill that you will constantly be trying to get to the end of.

Why is that? Why can’t you be in the present? Is it pressure? Validation? Insecurity? You already know the answer, even if you pretend to yourself that you do not.

Every moment you spend in anticipation of the future reduces your ability to be content now. All we ever have is this present moment, and the decisions we make in them. Sometimes – often actually – you decide to be unhappy now in the hope that you will be happy later.

And this is a fool’s errand. Because in order for you to happy later, you must stop resisting your life and choose to be happy now.

If you enjoy my writing I also have a Substack here where I write about things beyond mental health.