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Inner Guidance--Why Your Happiness Should Come First
One day when I was a kid, I ate a whole bunch of little green apples from my grandma's tree in her back yard.
About twenty minutes later, my belly started to hurt. Like most little boys do, I ran to my mom, and she held me and told me it would feel better after I went to the bathroom. She was right.
These days when I hurt, I usually go the doctor. And, even though he doesn't make me feel as warm and cozy as my mom, usually he does something to make me feel better.
In contrast to what most of us believe, pain is not the enemy. Pain is a warning light that tells us something needs to be done. Whether it's rest, medicine, massage, or surgery, some action needs to be taken. It's like the "check engine" light in your car. Ignore it at your own peril.
Physical pain is like a screaming little baby who needs attention right now. There's another kind of pain, though, that's not physical. It's not usually acute as its physical counterpart, but its effects can cripple the strongest of men. Of course, I'm talking about emotional pain.
I've heard it said that unhappy is to our lives what pain is to our body. As is the case with physical pain, emotional pain tells us that something is wrong. Unlike physical pain, however, it's not just in one spot. Rather, it encompasses our whole body, and is sometimes much more difficult to treat.
Many people don't accept this concept. We still place a certain stigma on people who sometimes have difficulty coping. We somehow view ignoring our feelings as honorable, and so we go through life wondering what went wrong.
One reason we don't pay attention to our feelings is that we believe it's wrong to put our happiness before others. We think that we have to make other people happy first, and only then it's OK for us to be happy. This kind of thinking borders insanity.
First of all, you can't give what you don't have. How can you possibly make somebody happy if you are miserable? Also, happiness is a state that cannot be given, only shared. You can't share your happiness with somebody else if you have none. In fact, you end up doing just the opposite of what you intended to do.
You see, people who are always suffering and sacrificing depress and discourage everybody they come into contact with. Nobody wants to be around somebody like that. Can you imagine a miserable person trying to make others happy? How absurd.
To make others happy, you've got to do things that make you happy. You are truly the best person you can be when you're following your own happiness.
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