If you’re stuck in the belief that happiness depends on what happens outside of yourself, you’re in for a very long wait. If you’re stuck in the belief that a happy relationship depends on “him/her” deciding to love you and be romantic and loving towards you, you’re in for a very long wait.

If you’re stuck in the belief that happiness falls out of the sky to those who are lucky, or beautiful, or weigh the right amount, or work at the right place, or drive the right car, or know the right people -- you’re in for a very long wait.

Happiness depends on you. Happiness depends on your willingness to replace your wishbone with a backbone. Happiness depends on you actively going after what you want, whether that’s love on Valentine’s Day, a body that looks great in a size 10, a Mercedes in the driveway - or all three.

And I know - accepting that your happiness depends on you can be scary. That means you have to stop blaming other people, things, circumstances, situations, and start working on taking charge, taking control, making your own desires come true. And that takes courage.

“I don’t’ have any courage”, Mary said. “What does courage mean to you?” I ask. “Firefighters, policemen, those people on American Idol”, she said. “Those kids over in Iraq; my mother living through the Depression; my sister who works with the homeless children. All those things are courage to me. I don’t do any of those things, I don’t have any courage.”

Yes, all those things take courage, but all of those things also have something else in common. Do you think any one of those things can be accomplished without feeling some fear? No. There cannot be courage without fear.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment or decision that something else is more important than the fear. Courage is what you do *in spite* of the fear - in spite of the fear of failure, in spite of the fear of resistance, in spite of the fear of rejection.

You can show courage every day. It takes courage to go against “that’s just the way it is.”; or “what can I do about it?”, or “I’ve always been this way”; or “They won’t let me...”.

Courage is deciding not to put your current desires above your desires for the future. Courage is deciding there’s something more important. Courage is living life to its fullest potential, being willing to “bloom in the pot you were put in”, as the old saying goes. Maybe you don’t have the genes of a movie star, maybe you are tired every single day because you’re a single parent, maybe you do feel every day is just another battle with the world.

Happiness - your own individual, personal, unique brand of happiness - depends on you deciding what you want and making a plan and sticking to it. None of those examples above fell out of the sky -- they came with specific decisions, specific choices. Choices just like you make every single day.

For me, courage always brings to mind the Bible story of David fighting Goliath. In order to get into the Promise Land, David had to fight his giant.

Don’t you image he had something else he would have rather done that day? Fighting a giant wasn’t likely at the top of his list. But he chose not to put his current desire over his true desire. He took his future into his own hands (with help of course!).

In order to get into your own personal promise land, you’ll have to have courage to stand up to your personal giants too.

Courage doesn’t mean that you don’t recognize the difficulty of the task. (Think about David and Goliath again.) Not at all. It does mean that you are willing to do it anyway, to push yourself out of the comfort zone, to give it your best try, and if you fail, to try again and again.

Courage is standing up to whatever mental-emotional-physical “Giant” is in your life.

Resolve to live in such a way that courage, not fear, directs your life. Resolve to determine your own worth, not let someone else decide it for you. Resolve to stop working hard to build someone else’s dreams.

Your happiness depends on it.

Kathy Gates
http://www.reallifecoach.com/