If you do, that’s great! But here’s the secret: your mouth can’t be the only part of you wishing for joy and peace. Your actions have to also be in alignment. I often wonder if people really know how to be happy. I’ve sat (not-so-quietly) by as I listened to friends sabotage their own relationships from the very start. It seemed as though their expectation was to be unhappy. They looked for the negative and nagged their partners to the point they were ready to walk away.
The problem is that people often carry baggage of relationships past. It’s not so easy to heal without first addressing that past hurt. Many feel that how they were treated by another will be exactly how they will be treated by the next. Even when they don’t experience that same negative pattern in their mate, they display actions that will re-create that previous relationship. Again, they don’t expect to be happy here either. The conversation they have had with themselves has convinced them they don’t deserve the happiness that everyone else seems to have. So when happiness appears they subconsciously fight it.
True joy isn’t tied to another person. We have more control over it than we admit. The idea is to come into the relationship with an inner joy. Our spouses are only to add to our lives. The quicker we accept that, the stronger our marriages will become. In order to get to this point we must accept the loves lost and let ourselves off the hook. We tend to blame ourselves for failed relationships. Forgiving not only ourselves but the person that broke our heart allows us to have the closure we need and trust again.
Say this with me “We deserve happiness!” Let’s start by:
- Writing ourselves a letter with the details of why we deserve joy.
- Discovering what brings us joy and peace. Is it quiet time to meditate, or a walk? Whatever it may be, do it often.
- Trusting our spouse. When we trust our spouses to love us and make good decisions it releases a lot of the stress we may normally carry.
- Making it a habit to look for the good. Our spouses are going to upset us from time to time. We must look at it from a different perspective by asking ourselves if our spouse would intentionally do something to hurt us. If we answer yes, our marriage needs serious work and we should take immediate action.
- Not sweating the small stuff. Everything doesn’t have to be a fight. Don’t keep your guard up always in combat mode. Look for new ways to love your spouse and bring peace to your partnership.
The more at peace we are with ourselves, the more peace we can bring to another person. Our mates also deserve happiness. Whatever it takes so that we believe joy is ours for the taking, let’s go for it!