This one’s a bit tricky. It’s true: when we give happiness to others, our hearts swell and pop with happiness. However, if we aren’t able to strike the right balance between making ourselves happy, and giving happiness to others, we accidentally end up in a cycle of doing and then resenting if we don’t receive what we felt we gave.
Alternatively, if we’re not careful we can inadvertently assume responsibility for someone else’s happiness and spend all of our precious energy trying to make life easier for everyone else around us (at the expense of our own health and sanity). We scramble, push and hustle: we get back a bit of praise and feel great. We beam. We juggle ten different plates and steer fifty ships: we get back a couple of nice words and our hearts beat a bit faster. We just keep doing it and doing it and running the same exhausting wheel—until we’re spent. Destroyed: “What about me?”
In order to do things from an authentic space of “I really want to do it” rather than “I’m doing this for acknowledgment, praise and validation”, we need to tap into ourselves and ask: “Why am I doing this?” and “Do I actually want to do this?” If it’s clouded with a need for praise and love in return, then we need to explore that need in ourselves at a deeper level and understand that it probably comes from an early family dynamic.
In other words, I think happiness is a tricky concept that extends further than just being of service to others. The actual act of giving and the motivations behind it need to be clear for it to bring happiness to firstly ourselves and then to others.
Now, there’s a profound teabag tip for ya Monday!
Have a good one xxx
