A Better Life Will Only Open Up For You If You Think You Deserve It

When you understand and internalize the idea that you deserve to be happy, a better life will open up for you. Your days are flourishing with new opportunities, the doors are opening. Your enemies become towers of salt that are blown away by the wind. Nothing can stop us when we see ourselves as someone who deserves joy, and no one wants the power to capture our desires with fear.

Emily Dickinson wisely said in her poems that we are not aware of our own growth until we stand upright. The strangest thing about all this is that sometimes it’s actually how we were raised. Society in general and the people around us prefer that we be submissive, quiet, and obedient.

In fact, that’s exactly what happened to Massachusetts’ poets. The disappointment, fear and sadness ended with her hiding in her room in the family’s Amherst home. It made her a shadow of herself. She was just an extremely thin figure that the neighbors just saw through the windows.

Of her 1,800 poems, only a dozen were published while she was alive. She only loved one person in her life, but none of them were brave enough to take the first step.

It was, of course, a different time. Of course, there were other ways of thinking. But complex emotions, insecurity and lack of trust never end completely. It’s like a movie that never stops. One that brings us a magical moment and lets it go. One who shows us what happiness is and quickly takes it away, leaving us with longing, pain, memories and remorse.

We regret because we did not want “anything more”,  because we did not fight, did not feel that we deserved the opportunity that arises only once in life, and because we did not gather enough courage for the lost love…

A better life will open up for you: you deserve it

Ana has started going to the gym because she wants to live a better life. She goes every day from 7 to 8. And yet she still smokes two packs of cigarettes a day. Carlos lost his job 9 months ago. He leaves home to submit job applications every day, but when he gets home, he starts eating comfort food. He eats so much that the change in his body is already very noticeable. Marta ended a terrible relationship a month ago, and since then she has been hooked on online dating. She is forced to find the “perfect man”.

We can summarize all these examples in a known idea. Just when we find balance in one part of our lives, we take frightening steps backwards in other parts. It is as if we do not understand that we deserve a better life. As a result, we stop taking care of ourselves in a full and healthy way. Why do we do this? Why do we not begin to take real control of our lives so that we can be happy and healthy?

We should not only look for the answer to this question in our past, but also  in our own inability to take care of ourselves, nourish our soul, and most of all, to process our emotions. In these three examples, we have seen how each person took some good action. One of them goes to the gym. Another is looking for a job, and the last one has ended an unhappy, complex relationship.

But the rest of their behavior gives rise to the darkness we all recognize. Anxiety, insecurity, fear of the future, inability to be alone, addiction. We all know we deserve a better life, but we do not know how to see our actual needs. We can not see those who are deep inside us.

Believe in yourself, because being happy is not a need, it is a right

Life will only give us more chances if we put one foot in front of the other and look for them. Happiness will knock on our door only if we are receptive, attentive, prepared and above all ready for it.

Because anyone who lets fear and insecurity take control will end up with lost opportunities. Because everyone who accepts defeat in the face of disappointment will sooner or later choose the same physical and mental cage that Emily Dickinson put herself into.

In today’s world where we can find “happiness pills” on Twitter and Facebook in the form of beautiful sentences, there is one thing we should not lose. This is something that critics of positive psychology remind us of. We must learn to accept painful experiences, no matter how difficult it may be.  A job you have lost, disappointment, or failure in something, is something we should accept no matter what.

After we dive into the chaotic abyss of negative emotions, it’s time to get out. And we get stronger from it.

And in our complex and demanding daily lives, we should internalize the fact that we do not just deserve happiness and peace. We do not just deserve to feel happy and free. All of these things are actual rights. Because it does not matter what our history is, where we are from, or who we are. We all have an absolute right to be happy and decide what it means to us.