The Secret to Happiness Lies in a Simple Quote:

Comparison is the Thief of Joy – Theodore Roosevelt

This simple quote, is bursting of profound beautiful wisdom.  Spoken by former president Theodore Roosevelt, these words are the secret to happiness, for which some people spend a lifetime searching.  These three little words are the cure for melancholy, loneliness, and jealousy.  This quote might not be the cure for clinical depression, but it is a source of joy and an inspiration for many who find themselves delving back into the sea of negative emotions.  Almost every time that I feeling unhappy or devoid of joy, I can identify some person or situation to which I am comparing myself.  It might sound overly simple and easy to scoff at, but I ask you to search, to explore the times when you feel a lack of joy.  I hazard to guess that you will identify the cause as comparison.

The secret to happiness lies in little quote: Comparison is the thief of joy. 

This quote has an erie ability to resurrect itself in my life when I seem to need it most.  I forget when I fist heard it, but I do know that it left an impact on me.  Years later, during a particularly unhappy and stressful time in my life, two friends began talking to me about Liz Gilbert’s book, Big Magic.  Two people talking about the same book, at the same time, must have been a sign.  So I picked up a copy for myself and there inside the splendid pages of that book, along with many other nuggets of wisdom, was Roosevelt.

My present situation was not the cause of my unhappiness.  If I look back and honestly examine that time, there was no major cause for it.  I had my health, had found the love of my life, was blessed with a wonderful family and loving dog, many good friends.  I had so many gifts but I couldn’t see them.  I couldn’t see them because I was so intently focused on those that others were enjoying.

The job was tough and I dealt with many unhappy people, but that shouldn’t have affected me as deeply as it did.  It turns out that I was lusting after greener pastures.  I became fixated on people who had started their own businesses and were architecting their own success.  I looked past their hard work and dedication chalking their happiness up to luck.  While doing so, I created a hole in which comparison snuck into my life and robbed me of any joy that I had.  Reading Big Magic and seeing those familiar words helped me to adjust my focus.

Quickly I realized that there was nothing keeping me from achieving the very things that they had.  With hard work and dedication, I too could somehow become my own boss, work from home with my dog curled up at my feet and go on lunch dates with friends.   So with Roosevelt’s help, I picked myself up off of my rump (for no one can really do it for us), and I got to work.  Literally a few months later, I was saying goodbye to the driver on my bus route and setting up a home office.  There is still stress.  There is a lot of unknown.  Lord knows that there are plenty of distractions and no one else to blame when you screw up.  But I am the architect of my own happiness, and it’s up to me whether I take my challenges and compare them to others around me.

Today I got the opportunity to meet a lovely lady and fellow blogger for lunch and wouldn’t you know we started talking about other bloggers, how it seemed as though they had overnight success and didn’t we wish that we could be like them…until we reminded ourselves that, that’s not us.  We are not them.  What they are doing is not what will make us happy.  We could try to force ourselves to fit into that model but we wouldn’t be true to ourselves and we would constantly be comparing ourselves to them.  Could you imagine the stress? It was so healthy and refreshing to connect with Angelica of Gardening in High Heels and hear her story.  It’s uncannily similar to mine, with a few different twists and turns.  Sometimes it helps to have a friend to remind you, to catch you when you are allowing comparison to rob you of your happiness.