LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION!

By Lionel Ketchian

The three most important things about real estate are LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION! It's just as true when it applies to your HAPPINESS.

Like most people, you're probably looking for happiness. Our country is founded on the principle of the "pursuit of happiness." We have grown up being told, and believed, that happiness is out there...somewhere. Happiness cannot be found "out there," because it's within you! Happiness is a matter of LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION! If you cannot find happiness where you are right now, where are you going to find it?

The pursuit of happiness is wonderful way of finding happiness. You must pursue happiness is the right way. Often it leads you to the very opposite, which is unhappiness. As long as you think someone else will make you happy, you have taken the power away from yourself to make it happen.

If you are waiting for the right things to happen, so you can finally be happy, then you are losing valuable days of your life. You are waiting to finish school, so you can get on with your life, and get a good job so you can pay for your education and make a living. You're waiting to find someone nice, so you can have a loving partner and get married, and have kids. Then. you wait for the kids to grow up, catch up on the bills for the kids, and the house, so you can be happy. You hope the kids finally leave the house so you can be happy. You try to make enough money for retirement so you can finally be happy. Happiness has somehow eluded you.

Happiness will not be your mate, your marriage, your kids, your house or your money! Happiness is not found outside of yourself. Happiness can only be accomplished from the inside out. When you need reasons to be happy, you end up with reasons to be unhappy. Why does that happen each and every time? Life will never be perfect enough for you to be happy. You must first be happy, for everything else to finally be perfect enough.

Once again, happiness is a matter of location. As long as you put your power outside yourself, you allow someone, or some thing else to have power over you. You will not be happy. The same is true of allowing yourself to be happy when the situation gets better. Great! Now you're happy because things are finally going the way you want. However, just as soon as the situation becomes worse, you become unhappy again. You must ask yourself is if you were ever happy to begin with.

Many times you end up getting the situation you desire in life, and yet you are still unhappy. Worrying about losing something prevents you from being happy. It's strange, because you get what you want, than worry about losing it. This is the way millions of people live their lives. They just don't know where happiness is located.

Why give people, events, situations and even serious illness power over you? Change what you can, and don't give the things you can't change power over you. Happiness is an issue of power. When you give your power away to any of life's situations, you lose your happiness. It is so important to not give up your power, which is your happiness. Think about it, if something makes you unhappy, it has power over you, right? If a person makes you unhappy, it's an issue of power. They seem to have the power to make you unhappy, the truth is, you have given them your power. Remember to take it back, it belongs to you!

We think we have to get loud and angry or get mad, get sad, or get even, to change things. In other words, we think we have to become unhappy to get what we want. It is a current belief that acting unhappy is a powerful way to change things that you don't like. Actually the opposite is true. When you stay happy, you are exercising your power. Staying happy allows you access to your wisdom. Stay with your happiness, it's what you want. Think about a time when you were unhappy. Take a good look at how you felt when you were unhappy. Is it worth feeling like that for anything? No, of course not! Staying happy will get you what you want much quicker, and better than unhappiness ever will.

In the book, As a Man Thinketh, by James Allen, he says, "Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life." Remember that what has happened is not as important as what you do about what has happened.

The next time someone asks, "Where do you find happiness?" Tell them it is all about location, location, location. Tell them they are standing on the very spot for finding happiness...it is right there within themselves.