How to Be Happy: It Starts With You

How to be happy: the guide
There were days when the tears would start
before I even got out of bed.
There was so much sadness and pain
that I was almost drowning in them.
Happiness came and went,
until I decided to take hold of it
with both hands and not let it go.
That doesn’t mean I’m happy all the time,
or that I have good thoughts all day long.
I’m not always certain, either, and sometimes I hurt and feel sad,
but I stopped wearing myself down.
I realized that I alone am responsible for my happiness.
This is the path to happiness I wrote down:

Step one: take responsibility for it

Your children won’t make you happy,
your partner isn’t responsible for your happiness,
and that beautiful home or car won’t bring you happiness either.
No one and nothing else.
It starts with you.
The first step is to take responsibility.
In other words, no one is to blame.
The surest path to happiness begins
with changing your story.
There’s a reason people ask, “What’s your story?”
Your story is the melody of your life.
Pause for a moment. What are you telling yourself?
Is life difficult or beautiful?
Is yours a happy story,
a romantic comedy or a tragedy in installments?
To change the story, you have to change your inner dialogue.
Here’s a tip: don’t say things like
“I can’t” or “I have no strength.”
(The moment you say it, you drain your own strength.)
Change it to “I can. I’ll succeed. Everything is working in my favor.”
Then watch the magic happen.
Life is about the journey, not necessarily the destination.
Many people postpone their happiness until…
until I have money / until the kids grow up / until I find love / until…
No!
There’s only this moment, and I’m enjoying it,
even if I haven’t reached the destination.
Celebrate along the way.
Why?
Because wisdom is patience.
Let things develop. Don’t rush or try to speed up the process. Things take time, and only with time does it become clear that this is how it was meant to be. Even fruit picked too soon may taste bitter because you rushed the process.
A person who fails or makes a mistake… (and that’s all of us!)
If they’re not wise,
they despair.
If they’re wise,
they go back to the starting point and begin again.

Gili Man Wolner

Summary: how to be happy

The episode explores the question “How can I be happy?” and offers six main ideas:

Personal responsibility: Happiness comes from taking responsibility for our lives and our feelings. No one else can make us happy.
Changing your life story: We need to challenge and change the stories we tell ourselves about our lives and use positive language.
Enjoying the journey: Learn to enjoy the journey, not only the destination, and don’t postpone happiness until you reach a particular goal.
Patience and faith (emunah): Good things take time. Faith and patience help us see the salvation and the process as a whole.
Forgiveness and letting go of anger: Letting go of anger and forgiving others allows us to receive forgiveness and love in return.
Positive thoughts: Changing our thoughts can change our feelings and our reality.

The episode ends with a practical exercise: make a two-column list to identify the actions and circumstances that helped you feel happy in the past, then use it to re-create those conditions in the present.

How to be happy: the complete guide by Gili Man Wolner

Life is a journey, and every journey has challenges, stops along the way, and moments of joy and sadness. We’re all looking for a path to real, lasting happiness. In episode 60 of the Hebrew-language podcast The Truth Hurts (HaEmet Ko’evet), I talked about what happiness is and how we can find it in everyday life. In this guide, I’ll share the insights and tools from the episode, along with some additional practical tips to help you find your own path to happiness.

Taking responsibility for your happiness

This week, after the previous episode, I was asked the same question several times. If I boil it down to one sentence, it is this: What can I do to be happy? We return to this idea again and again, but it bears repeating: you are responsible for your own happiness.

That starts with taking responsibility. Your children won’t make you happy. Your partner won’t make you happy, and neither will anyone else around you. Even a big house with a pool won’t do it. No one and nothing else can make you happy. Only you can bring happiness into your heart. Money, possessions and other people can’t do that for you. It begins with taking responsibility for the calm and peace within your own heart.

Why your personal story matters

How do you begin? Start by paying attention to your story. We’ve talked about this a million times, too. What’s your story? There’s a reason people ask that question. I work with social media, and there’s a reason social media has “Stories”: everyone tells their own story. So what’s yours?

The surest path to happiness begins with changing your story. Challenge it, even break it apart. Your story is like the glue holding all your beliefs together. It creates a narrative, a kind of melody, about your life, yourself, other people and relationships. We all hold different beliefs, and we need to challenge and question the stories we tell ourselves.

Changing your inner dialogue

Start by changing your language. How do you talk to yourself? What do you tell yourself? “Life is hard.” “Life is beautiful.” “Life is smiling on me.” “Life is miserable.” “I always fail,” or “I always find the right path.” What stories am I telling myself about my life? Is mine a happy story, a romantic comedy or a tragedy in installments?

Everyone writes their own script. Changing the script means changing your inner dialogue. I keep telling myself, “I can. I’ll succeed. If it happened, it happened for my good.” I keep encouraging myself. It’s like carrying a chorus of encouragement in your heart, lifting you up again and again. That brings me to the next point: learning to enjoy the journey, not only the destination.

Enjoying the journey, not just the destination

Many of us postpone happiness until… until we earn our degree, lose weight, find the love of our life or find a good job. Why? We have only this moment, and I’m enjoying it even if I haven’t reached the destination. I’m driven to achieve, and I do teach people to reach their goals. But I also teach them, and myself, to celebrate along the way, because life is one journey after another.

Holding on to innocence and faith

A word for everyone who was hurt because they trusted with an open heart: don’t worry, because this is surely your salvation. It isn’t a fall; it’s the salvation. You need strong faith to see it. Many people stumble here because their innocence was exploited. Don’t cling to naivete. Recognize the crisis and strengthen your faith.

Even if I’ve broken down and lost everything, I may not know how long it will take, but salvation and a miracle are on the way. It’s better to remain innocent. One definition of wisdom is patience. Wisdom means letting things develop without rushing or trying to speed up the process. Good things take time.

Good things take time

Why can’t good things happen right away if they’re for the good? If it’s good, let it happen now. Why not now? The fact is that you have to travel a certain path. Things take time, and only with time does it become clear that this is how it was meant to be. If you rush, you can ruin even good things.

Take baking, for example. Any chef will tell you that if you rush it, you’ll ruin it. Think of fruit growing on a tree: if you pick it too soon, it may taste bitter because it hasn’t finished ripening. We’re the same. Take the long view instead of focusing only on immediate gratification, and celebrate along the way even if you haven’t reached the peak you hoped for.

Changing the way you think

People waste entire lives without understanding that they can change the way they think. It is possible. It’s like creating a new playlist or putting a different filter on life. If I change my thoughts, I can get my mind to work for me. That will change my feelings, and then my whole reality will change.

Will I have positive thoughts all day long? No. Will I have 100% certainty? Again, no. But can you stop beating yourself up? Yes. Even when life isn’t going the way I want, so what? I can re-create it again and again.

Dealing with failure

When someone fails or makes a mistake, as we all do, an unwise person despairs. A wise person goes back to the starting point. I made a mistake? It didn’t work? I’ll try another way. Repentance (teshuvah, literally “return”) means going back to the starting point and changing things. There’s no need to despair. Most people who have succeeded in different fields didn’t do so simply because they were smarter or more capable than others. They were consistent.

Don’t despair. Someone who never falls along the way can’t find their way back. Think of the invention of electricity: people speak of an inventor making some 20,000 attempts. If he had given up when he fell short, we wouldn’t have electricity today. That is true of every invention. Whenever you encounter a difficulty, a solution exists. The key is not giving up. Act, move and keep doing the work.

The power of words and thoughts

When someone says, “I have no strength,” they drain their strength in that very moment. That’s why your words and thoughts need to be, “I have strength, and I’ll succeed.” It doesn’t matter where you are on life’s winding road, what difficulty you’re facing or whether you’re caught in a dilemma you think you’ll never escape.

Don’t say, “I can’t,” and don’t ask, “Why?” There is a Creator, and the Creator stands with you and says, “If I’m with you, you can do anything. If I brought you this difficulty, you can get through it.” In other words, I have to set that rule for myself, live by it and say: the words “I have no strength” are no longer part of my vocabulary, either inside or out.

The power of your inner world

Especially inside, because in the end everything is within us; nothing is outside. That assumes people have done the work. Most people say, “I have no strength,” at some point every day. Notice how often you and others say it. I fall into that habit all the time, too. But when I say, “I have no strength,” I immediately tell myself, “I have so much strength.” The words I use about myself affect me.

The power of faith

Three years ago, we were living through COVID here. People weren’t leaving their homes and were afraid of physical contact. Only eight months ago, 1,400 people were murdered, yet it feels as if it happened years ago. We live in a fast-moving reality in which nothing feels secure. You have no idea what will happen tomorrow. All you have is your faith in the Creator.

This is called the birth pangs of the Messiah (chevlei Mashiach). This is a period of sharp changes, when there is no stability in the world. The Creator is telling us that time is up and there is no longer time to wait for the Messiah. During the birth pangs of the Messiah, our understanding that nothing is certain grows stronger and everything moves quickly. The only thing we should rely on is our faith, not anything physical.

Responsibility for your life

You have no idea what will happen. You have to understand, and we all have to understand, that time is up. We are no longer living in the kind of time we once knew. Heaven has everything except a clock. That brings us back to taking responsibility for our own lives.

A personal example

Have you ever seen one person for whom everything goes right in life and another for whom nothing does? Of course you have. One woman gets married, has children, an apartment and a good income, and everything flows smoothly for her. For another, everything is dark and gloomy.

She takes her frustration out on everyone. Suppose she does get married: the blowups and fights begin on day one. She lives in a rented apartment in a terrible place, can barely pay the rent, keeps getting fired and moves from one job to another.

Why such bad luck?

The question is why the Creator gives one person an easy life and another a hard one. How is that decision made? The Gemara, a record of rabbinic discussion in the Talmud, teaches that anyone who lets go of grievances against others is forgiven for their own transgressions. In other words, the way we measure and judge others is the way we are measured and judged. The Baal Shem Tov explains that the Creator brings out the recording of how you judged a friend and judges you by that recording.

Recordings in heaven

Say you’re in a traffic jam and someone cuts in. It’s frustrating, and you can refuse to let him merge. That’s the attribute of strict judgment. When you turn to the Creator and say it isn’t right or fair that you’ve been waiting for a quarter of an hour while this person cuts in, you are right by the standards of strict heavenly justice. The next time you ask Him for something beyond the letter of the law, remember how you judged others.

He’ll tell you, “All right, but wait. There are others ahead of you in line.” We know there is a lot of pain here, and we are living through it. This applies to divorce, too. I work with quite a few people who are divorced, and there is so much anger and pain there.

The need to forgive

But understand this: if you don’t forgive, however difficult it may be, there will be no forgiveness for you in Heaven. If you refuse to let things go, Heaven won’t overlook things for you, either. We need to understand that this whole situation that brought us together here is a kind of game. Beyond that game, we understand that the Creator is hidden here. The Hebrew word ne’elam means “hidden” and comes from a root associated with concealment.

The power to create

Beyond that, we understand that we have the power to create through our thoughts, feelings and actions. I have to understand that everything within me is expressed in my outer life. I can appear patient, but inside I’m burning, judging and criticizing. That is what life will give me in return: people will judge me, criticize me and put me down.

A deeper understanding

A person falls and gets back up because they don’t let the fall keep them down or drive them to despair. We need to understand that there is no despair in the world at all. If you’ve fallen into despair, my heart is with you, because we all end up there sometimes. What matters is how long you stay there. The path to happiness runs through me, myself and I. It can’t depend on anything external.

Paying attention

When a difficult event or an insensitive person comes your way, or when you notice yourself judging or criticizing someone, pay attention. In the end, we’re like magnets. If I’m in a particular emotional state, that state will echo back to me again and again.

The way to happiness

I came across a lovely quote this week. I don’t even remember where, but it stayed with me: “I hope you find someone who speaks your language, so you don’t have to spend your life translating your soul.” That’s profound.

Focusing on happiness

I noticed that her energy was dropping, and it came out in her drinking. She drinks, feels bad about herself, gets caught in an endless loop and judges herself. I told her, “Listen, let’s do something. People long for happiness when something is missing from their lives. Every one of us has experienced happiness.”

So I told her, “Take a sheet of paper, and let’s keep it simple. Draw a line down the middle of the page. On one side, we’ll write what makes you happy. What do you remember about the days when you were happy?”

Comparing the two states

She wrote: I used to get up at seven in the morning, meditate first thing, meet my coach once a week rather than once a month, and see friends. Then I told her, “All right, now write down what’s happening in your life today on the other side.” She gets up late, lets projects slip, suffers from headaches and has already been referred for liver tests. I told her, “Look, there’s a right side and a left side. It’s a matter of choice. If you choose to live the way you described on the left side, you can re-create the state in which you felt happy.”

A final tip

That’s my tip for you today. Take a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle. On one side, write what your life looked like when you were happy: how you behaved, what you did and what occupied your time. Compare that with what happens when you’re unhappy. Choose wisely. It works.

Summary

Take Nina, for example. We love Ninet and her song (in Hebrew). Remember that, in the end, someone is watching over us. That is a powerful promise to carry in your heart: the trust and faith that someone above is watching over us and listening to us. After all, what does a person need? To feel that they are not alone.

You’re not alone. Anything can happen. Everything is open. In the end, none of us stays here forever. But someone is always watching over you.

Have a good day!