How happy are you willing to be?

[After I wrote a draft of this, I wondered if, with everything going on in Ukraine, I could post it. Whether it seems naive in the context of so much personal upheaval to post something about happiness, especially something that says that happiness is often on the other side of taking personal risk.

Yet I believe that what I have written is just as true, maybe more so, in times of struggle. Even war.

See if you think so, too. And I welcome your comments.]

Safe looks comfortable, even happy. But is it?

Whether someone is thinking about the sale of their business or a change in career, I see, time and time again, the same fundamental misperceptions.

First someone thinks they can, and should, know exactly how things are going to work out. Before they start.

Second, they think there is a “right” path and a “wrong” one.

What I observe is that neither of these things is true. Instead, life presents doors, and we get to choose whether or not to walk through them.

Often, the desire for safety prevents someone from walking through a door. What might be on the other side? What if it doesn’t work out? And as we refuse to walk through these doors, over time, the structure that we call our life gets smaller and smaller. More and more, life feels small and restrictive rather than large and welcoming.

My experience is that people who say no, who refuse to walk through those doors, end up less happy than people who are willing to walk through one door without knowing what the next door will look like. Who are willing to start the book not knowing how it will end.

The people saying no, in my mind at least, are resisting the flow of life. And the flow of life is where the wonder, the awe, and yes, the happiness reside. Because we are made of the flow, when we feel the flow, the aliveness, we feel happy.

Each of us is that flow of life, the creative force of the universe, showing up in a unique way in a unique place at a unique moment in time. Over and over and over.

And the more we allow that flow, the more we allow ourselves to look in a direction and be amazed at what shows up, the more we get to be swept away in the flow of our own inherent happiness.

We can choose to be afraid. Most do.

But we can also make the other choice. Awe, grace, beauty, connection. Even in the midst of struggle or suffering, there is the more daring, the more expansive choice.

Open the door. Walk through it. And let me know what you see.