A New Paradigm

When life gets hard, really gut wrenching bad, we make a change, whatever change calls to us the loudest, whichever one is causing the most pain. It can be a career change, a new job, ending a relationship, or moving across the country- we have been engrained to our core to change the state of our circumstances rather than the state of our being.

It is written in the Constitution, and we have heard it repeated countless times, that we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...It has been hailed by so many our whole existence, that to question it, to dig deeper, feels distinctly un-patriotic. But it is time to dig a little deeper into this human right and see how it might be crippling our ability to change the paradigm of happiness that we have oft repeated. Happiness seems like the key word here but it is neatly hidden in a preposition, unable to stand alone to make a complete sentence. It is entirely dependent on the word pursuit, which actually creates its own mini-statement. The constitution gives us the right to pursue. One definition of pursuit is an effort to secure or obtain. Synonyms include : chase, hunt, search, preoccupation, inclination. It says we have the right to the pursuit, the chase, the catch 'em if we can philosophy of your average stalker. And everyday, we arm ourselves for the chase, the hunt, the search and more often than the constitution would probably like to admit, we come up empty handed.

We currently live in a culture of Do Have Be*, which basically states if I do something (work hard) I will have something (lots of money) I will be this way (happy). It is essentially the modern work ethic of our parents and grandparents and goes back to a very strong philosophy contained in the origins of our American legacy. It is the right to do anything you want and therefore, attain that which your work fairly rewards. It is a meritocracy based on doing as much as you can and ending up at the end with a pay day. We are basically trained to be terribly suspicious of anyone who has not worked up the ladder, and overly enchanted by the lore of the those who have "pulled themselves up by their bootstraps".

Now consider the Be Do Have paradigm which distinctly and irrevocably reverses the order: to (be) happy, to (do) that which you love, and (have) abundance. It is long documented that material abundance is much more enjoyable and worthwhile when we already have love and peace of mind. True abundance happens when we are living this principle of being in a state of happiness, and accepting that which comes our way because of our magnetism for life. The chances that we take when we expect to work hard to find happiness are too great. How much easier to just live in the state which you were previously pursuing, thus having already won at the game of life. If we are trying to work so hard to get the things we need to maybe find the feelings we imagine are there, we are playing an enormous game of chance with our lives.

So if you are going to work hard at something, work at this- find your peace of mind, your place of happiness, and learn to ignore your detractors, as well meaning as they prove to be. There will always be someone from the old school of thinking who will tell you that when you are in conflict you need to do something, change your circumstance, fill your time, work hard at a job, and pursue your happiness. It is these times of temptation to turn back to this old paradigm that is ill fitted to a new world to go deep inside yourself and tap your untold abundance. Remember it may feel easier to change your circumstances than your state of being, but circumstances are short lived and last only long enough to remind us again that it is we who need to change from the inside out, not the outside in.

*There are many references to the Be Do Have principle. I most recently read about it in Shortcut to a Miracle, in which it properly references the origins.