One of the gold nuggets I learned about inner peace and happiness during a challenging season in my life was that life is meant to be meaningful and not always happy. Most of us were taught how to achieve, adapt, and care for others, but not how to stay connected to ourselves when life gets hard. That gap is where a lot of unnecessary suffering lives.
Does this mean we shouldn’t desire to be happy? No, it means that the more we strive for happiness, the more these transient states will elude us.
A few years ago, I had a lot going on in my life that left me feeling stressed and not “happy.” Both my aging parents were suffering and in very vulnerable positions. It was painful to watch them suffer, and simultaneously, it triggered all sorts of things that I thought were behind me.
It was a time of realizing how fragile life was and that birth and death can and often do co-exist.
As I navigated this challenging time, I began questioning my underlying beliefs about the spiritual practices I had been engaging in over the past several years. I thought my spiritual practices, like meditation, gratitude, prayer and forgiveness, would result in more happiness and inner peace.
But what I found was that focusing on achieving happiness and inner peace increased my suffering. What was wrong with me? Wasn’t the spiritual path meant to make me happier and more peaceful? Was I doing something wrong? What was the point of all my practices if they weren’t to make me more comfortable and relaxed?
These beliefs left me feeling conflicted about my spiritual practices. I felt like I had become a spiritual cynic. Spirituality had let me down.
In a moment of desperation, I began to see that I was meant to integrate a fundamental belief I had acquired as part of my awakening journey into my messy life.
As part of our awakening journey, we realize that we have a dual nature – meaning we have a personality (ego) and a soul. Our personality is forever grasping, expecting and striving for happiness. This happiness feels achievable when life goes smoothly, and there are no storms.
But what happens when we find ourselves or someone we love facing challenges that inevitably arise? When we’re not happy because life feels hard?
The truth is that we can’t always be happy, even when our personalities would like us to be.
What if we valued and focused on living a meaningful life and being resilient rather than striving to be happy?
What I was slowly learning was that I’d spent decades developing the outer capacities like competence, caring and working hard, while the inner ones had been quietly neglected. The relationship I had with myself had never really been tended to. And that’s exactly what the challenging season was asking me to look at.
I worked for several years as a palliative care clinical nurse specialist and reflected on what working with people who were dying taught me about inner peace and happiness.
I realized that journeying with people at the end of their lives certainly didn’t make me happy, but it felt meaningful to me. I remembered how moments of joy would arise when I was gifted with a heart-to-heart connection with someone nearing the end of their life. There was a profound sense of what mattered when I knew my presence touched their life in a meaningful way, and their presence touched my life in a meaningful way.
I realized that I could recommit to my practice by shifting my focus from striving for inner peace and happiness to being resilient and living a meaningful life. I couldn’t be peaceful and happy, but I could practice building resilience in the face of challenging life circumstances and suffering.
Through my core meditation practice and a commitment to resilience, I successfully shifted my physiology and mindset. I let go of the pressure and expectation to be happy and peaceful and focused on meaning.
An interesting thing happened when I let go of striving for inner peace and happiness – I noticed that more inner peace and happiness spontaneously arose amid the chaos and suffering.
As a result of these last few months, I’m letting go of my focus on happiness and focusing squarely on habits that lead to greater resilience and the meaning that arises when life is challenging.
Meaning expands our souls, and the outcome is a profoundly fulfilling life because we’re at peace and not always meant to be happy. What I know now, and what that season taught me in the most humbling way, is that everything changes when your relationship with yourself changes. Not because life gets easier, but because you stop fighting it from the outside and start meeting it from within.
Please leave a comment below. Our community would love to hear from you!
Leave A Comment