Let me adapt a popular quote,

I’ve been unhappy and I’ve been happy. Happy is better!

I was pretty unhappy for a good chunk of my life. I can’t relive those years, but that was then and this is now. Now I can help you get to a happy life too.

There’s one major destroyer of happiness, and if you can get past it, you’re well on your way to true and lasting happiness.

Happiness relates to how you view the past.

It doesn’t relate to your past, it relates to how you view your past.

If you believe you didn’t have enough, weren’t good enough, were treated unfairly, or didn’t get what you deserved, you’re denying yourself happiness today.

Not enough love, not enough money, not enough attention, not enough security, not enough respect, not enough education…

Whatever it may be, if you think your past was lacking, or if you think you deserved more, you’re sabotaging your happiness today.

Confession: For Much of my Life I Wasn’t Happy
Then I made it a choice.

Your ego’s addicted to pulling you back down.

You have to fight against that urge every day.

Your ego took the stories of your past and turned them into an identity. It thinks you and the stories it created are the same thing.

It loves the charge it gets from reliving those stories. It makes it feel alive.

To change your stories, or to let them go sends your ego into defense mode. It has to fight for those stories because it’s addicted to them.

That’s why we try to let go of the painful parts of the past, but they still seem to follow us.

How do you let go of the past events that keep haunting you?

It’s easy for people to tell you to let the past go. Maybe you’ve tried to let it go over and over again just to have it chase you down each time.

Here’s how happy people do it.

Happy people look to the past with a sense of fondness and nostalgia. They find a way to see beauty in their experiences no matter how good or bad they were.

Happy people pick out the pleasant memories, and focus on them rather than on the pain.

Happy people have a sense of appreciation. They know those experiences built positive qualities of their character.

Happy people look through life with a lense of satisfaction. Things were and are enough.

Happy people transform their most painful parts into their present day strengths and gifts.

Happy people don’t compare their experiences with others.

Happy people manage their expectations. (Read more about that below)

How do You Slash Stress and Disappointment from Your Life?
Happiness grows when you know your expectations

Starting right now, view your past with a lense of appreciation and fondness.

The human brain is hardwired to remember the negative and forget the positive.

Remind yourself almost everything is going right. The few things that go wrong are given way more attention and worry than needed.

The more you take an active role in turning your thoughts to the positive that’s happened in your life, the easier it gets.

Parts of it may have been unpleasant.There were hard times, but end your story there. Anything else is a narrative of what you made that mean to you.

It’s time to see you had enough.

You made it through your childhood, so you had enough.

Appreciate that you had enough, and you still have enough right now. Be satisfied that whatever happened, it brought you to where you needed to be today.

The fact is, the Universe gave you enough of what you needed to survive.

I had enough. I have enough. I am enough.

If your past is a roadblock to feeling happy today, we have to resolve that right now. Your present day well being is too valuable to let anything get in its way.

After all this time, you deserve to feel happy.

Be sure to download your free Mastering Happiness PDF course!