The Secret to Extraordinary Happiness

Do you ever feel like happiness is always out there, just out of your reach? Or do you ever feel that you wont have true, real, authentic, life-altering happiness until everything is perfect?




I want to share a little lesson with you that I learned while on my holiday in Fiji. When it hit me, my eyes widened, my mouth dropped and a BIG-ASS shift happened.




But first, we gotta take it back a couple of years..





When I was 14, I remember saying to my bestie "holiday's make you hate your life". We were both holidaying in Australia with my mother at the time.






The reason I said that was because this was my first trip as a teenager overseas and I remember feeling like I was a brand new person, like I could do anything I wanted and I was free from the chains of life (or in my case at the time, boys and homework).




I remember feeling this incredible sense of fulfilment, vitality and excitement and that anything was possible. I knew without a doubt that my current life did NOT match up to what I wanted and I didn't want to return to it.




But hey, you don't get much say when you're fourteen huh? LOL.




That happiness and fulfillment returned once again on my excursion in Europe and America. I was free once again! I could be anybody, I could do anything and I could do whatever I wanted right now - be it swimming in Lake Como or wandering the streets of New York City with nothing but my feet guiding me. But even then I still couldn't grasp what it was I felt.




Third time lucky (and only last week) I had the chance for that feeling to come back once again. And it did! The aliveness followed me to Fiji! And this time I got the message loud and clear (finally!), the secret to my extraordinary happiness hit me so hard I almost fell out of my hammock!


You have to do shit NOW. There is no tomorrow!



I know right, it's actually not that profound or anything out of the ordinary - nor a secret.




But I wanna break down my discovery for you.




Life isn't this mundane, repetitive, 'work-till-you're-dead' game. That's what we're told life is. We go to work, we save a lil money, party on the weekends and then do it all over again the next week. We write our dreams and goals down and we stuff them away somewhere in the closet hoping that they'll come true soon.




We say we'll go to that cute little market this afternoon but then can't be bothered when the time comes around. We tell ourselves we'll eat only leafy green salads for lunch and then we put it off till next week. We say we'll ask for a raise, quit our jobs, have sex more often and lose the weight but it never happens and we just keep putting it off till tomorrow.








In Fiji, we had a set amount of time to get shit done and if we didn't do it we didn't get to experience it. So we had toup our game.




We caught the Bula Bus to Port Denarau even though we were hot, bothered and tired. We went swimming in the pool at night with cocktails even though we were exhausted from our day. We had our breakfasts, lunches and dinners in 5-star restaurants even though we weren't used to spending money like that. We took the last island tour that was left even though we wanted to go somewhere else.




And you know what happened?




We had the most delicious lunch with cocktails at the port together and I found some fantastic gifts for my family. Swimming in the pool, staring at the stars & dreaming about our future together was one of the highlight moments with my hunny. We got to have full and happy tummy's while being treated like superstars and we had the most incredible day snorkelling in crystal clear blue water discovering little fish and drinking to our hearts content.


Doesn't that sound so scrumdiddilyumptious?!?




If we didn't do any of that, if I bitched and moaned that I was too tired, too sore, too hot, too stubborn and too cheap I wouldn't have experienced the magic of our trip. I would have just spent all my time in my resort room watching tv. How dumb would that have been?







If you're bitching about why nothing has changed in your life, ask yourself what effort you've actually made to do it?




Did you get up this morning and go for a walk or did you tell yourself you'll do it later? Did you reward yourself with that massage or did you skimp on the fee and say it was too much?




The secret to extraordinary happiness is living your life as you want it to be RIGHT NOW. Not waiting till you're richer, thinner, happier, in a relationship, with a degree or with more confidence. You get all of that when you take the action beforehand. It's like losing weight, the results don't happen till a couple of weeks after you've started your weight loss plan.




This is bigger than just you, this is you and the universe collaborating and moving mountains. This is you and who you truly are creating universes and escaping the illusion.






I get it now, I get why when trekking round Europe (even on days when I didn't really want to but made the effort anyway) made me happier, more fulfilled, wiser, eat to my hearts content and lose weight, fall back in love, forgive, dream, believe, make peace, have more energy, become bold, express my true feelings, connect with the universe and trust my intuition.






I get it.




Because I showed up and did it anyway, regardless of how I (the ego) felt. I upped my game for the cause and life showed up for me and gave me all the things I truly wanted. I didn't even give it my 100% effort, action and focus. I just showed up and guess what? It gave me 100% what I wanted anyway.


If there is anything you do in your life from now on, I hope that you choose today instead of tomorrow.


There is actually no time. There is only right now. Chose right now to start living in it because THAT is how life was always meant to be. Extraordinary.