Tom Walsh Quote

How much time do we spend searching for happiness, hoping to find it in the new relationship or the new car or the new friendship or the new cell phone that has everything I’d ever want in a cell phone?  Yet when these things come into our lives, we feel a sense of gratification for a while, but no real happiness.  Person after person in history tells us that happiness is indeed an inside job, something that comes as a result of our attitudes and our perspective—not something that causes them to change to something better.  The new boyfriend or girlfriend isn’t going to make us happy, for the happiness we feel can come only from ourselves.      Our cultures tell us differently sometimes, but that’s usually because someone has something to sell us, and if they can promise us happiness through what they sell, we’ll be more likely to buy.  (Use our toothpaste and you’ll get a new girlfriend, and then you’ll be happy!)  Life doesn’t work that way, though advertisers want to convince us that it does.  Trust that happiness will come only as a result of our own attitude shifts, and then we’ll see the importance of learning all we can about happiness so that we can make that shift in our minds and hearts, and become happy and healthy human beings when we do so.