Until Yesterday I Was What I Could, Today I Am What I Want

Until recently, many of us were what we could or what others allowed us to be. However, over time, the heart lights up and the gaze becomes courageous. The fears are left behind, because today, finally, we are everything we want, without restrictions or reservations and without fear of what others will say.

It is not always easy to do it, it is the result of a journey for which you do not always buy the right tickets. Personal fulfillment does not come with the years, like the first white hair and the first wrinkles. Achieving fullness, that feeling of well-being and internal balance, is not a normal thing. Much less is it a program that we can install in the brain like someone who downloads a new application on a mobile phone.

On the other hand, there is something strange about all of this. When we sometimes pass in front of a bar and listen to conversations on the fly, there is a phrase that almost always repeats itself. It’s a sort of leitmotif, like a kind of lament or almost an invocation: “The only thing I want is to be happy”.

This sentence contains a certain amount of despair and many desires. It is as if many of us feel a kind of “depersonalization”, as if we are trapped in a reality that we do not identify with, that does not belong to us, because it simply does not give us real happiness.

We propose that you reflect on it and invite you to make changes, if necessary, to build a more satisfying reality.

The secret to a fuller life begins today

For many years, research focused on the study of happiness has focused on explaining to us how we could be happy. In fact, nowadays there is no shortage of self-help manuals that approach the subject almost all the same way: happiness as a goal. Here, happiness should not be a goal to be achieved, but a consequence, a by-product of each of the actions we perform every day, those for which it is worth living.

Let’s take an example: Alastair Humphreys is what we could define as an “adventurer”. This motivational writer and coach works for National Geographic and in 2012 launched a small challenge to his readers via the magazine. He wanted to teach his readers to foster their own personal growth , so that they were truly themselves and not what others expected of them.

To do this, he initiated them into a technique he called “micro-adventures”. It was a direct invitation to find inner balance through small daily challenges. The way to do it couldn’t be simpler. His proposal was the following.

The daily pursuit of pleasure, knowledge and freedom

The secret to having a fuller life can start today, but to succeed  we need two fundamental ingredients: constant commitment and creativity. This is how our daily micro-adventures will generate new thoughts, new emotions and better well-being.

These are some examples

• Change your way to work. If you usually go by car, instead, take the bus and observe the city, the people. If you go by bus, get off one stop earlier and continue on foot. Enjoy that moment, of your present, of what you feel, of what you see and surrounds you.

• Eat in a park, get out of your usual circle of friends and talk to new people.

• Break habits, try to get lost in your city, force your gaze to look for different things.

• Wake up at dawn, meditate at sunrise. Think about what you want to achieve during the day and decide what you don’t want.

• Push yourself to do something new every day: a new sport, a new book, a new passion, a new friendship, a new hairstyle, a new thought, a new attitude …

Putting these simple “micro-adventures” into practice day by day generates small constant changes that, little by little, will give way to something new. Thus we will understand that true happiness starts from a process and is not an unattainable goal on the horizon. It is about overcoming limiting walls, barriers and ways of doing things to find ourselves, to allow our authentic being to emerge.

What I was yesterday and what I am today

There are those who are proud of never having changed. To always have the same thought, the same attitudes and the same essence. We must be careful of these people, because the human being, whether we like it or not, is obliged to advance as a person, to grow, to be flexible and to adapt to this complex reality in order to build a more integral, real and satisfying happiness. .

Not being the same person as yesterday is not a drama. Because beyond the wounds, the disappointments and the losses, something new was born from all of this. Something gorgeous, even brighter and, without a doubt, much stronger. What we are today is not only the result of our past, our being also houses hope in the future and the pleasure of a present to enjoy by being ourselves.

We must understand, therefore, that happiness is a process, not a goal. We must learn that TODAY is always the best time to make decisions, to reaffirm ourselves and to cross the barriers of our fears, so that we can touch the tip of everything we really deserve.