The Good Life is here right now if you want it. You merely have to accept the paradox that it’s all in your head.
Now I don’t mean that it’s not real — that it’s a mere fantasy that can never exist. Quite the opposite…
The good life is very real. [It’s everything you think you’re waiting for that’s just an illusion. You’re wasting your time hoping and striving for something that will never come.] But you’re the only one with the power to bring it about.
Because all those external conditions… All the physical things you want… All the friends and lovers you wish you had… All that wealth… Even your health…
All of those make no ultimate difference to your feeling of the good life if your mind isn’t right. And no lack of external ‘desirables’ can stop you from experiencing the good life if your mind is in the right place.
The external world is definitely out there. But the only place we experience any of it is in our consciousness.
Choose to respond to the same external reality in a different way and your experience of the world — of life — changes too.
So external situations have no power to affect our state other than the power we give them. We are ultimately the ones in control. And we always have the choice to see them from a positive angle. To decide that this is ‘enough’.
So many externally successful people are still unhappy.
Wealth… luxuries… power… respect… love… None of these can guarantee happiness.
Joseph Heller put his finger on what really matters when Kurt Vonnegut teased him that the host of the swanky party they were at had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned in lifetime sales of his bestselling novel Catch-22.
Heller replied: “Yes, but I have something he will never have . . . enough.”
The rich guy in the story has so much more than Heller from an external point of view. But, when you look at what’s going on in their minds, the situation reverses completely. Heller is the one in possession of what really matters.
I’d add another simple angle to Heller’s “more vs enough”… “Now vs later”.
When you choose to see what you have as enough — you’ve got the good life.
When you choose to embrace the present moment rather than waiting impatiently for a ‘better’ future — you’ve got the good life.
These choices are purely in the mind. They’re not dependent on physical reality. And you can choose to go to them whenever you want.