Still searching for happiness?

Eli literally stopping to smell the roses

All too often I find myself feeling like life is passing me by, like i'm not enjoying the everyday experience of existence. And sometimes i find myself searching and searching for some secret hidden meaning, some complex reason to explain this sense of imbalance.

Is it the change of the season? The change in my diet, maybe it's the different brand of spirulina? maybe my copper and zinc levels are low and that's throwing my chakras out of line with my spirit animals energy flow........?

Recently I did something that I never thought I'd find myself doing, giving up an addiction. In truth it was only coffee, I didn't get hooked on wheatgrass (largely because it tastes like lawn cuttings!) or anything stronger.

I have over the years done lots of work as a life coach, a personal trainer and also a nutritional mentor, and the subject of coffee has come up a lot with many of my clients. It seems that the natural nutritionist view (which I tend to take), of coffee being really very bad for you, for reasons I won't bore you with now, can be quite a controversial view. It seems that people are so determinedly blinded by their love of their chosen boost that they have sought out evidence to prove that this black elixir does them the world of good, like tincture for the soul.

Anyway, i digress. So, to cut a long story short, at the age of 30, having had a total of about 5 cups of coffee to date,I went to Italy, discovered the wonder that is a proper Italian espresso, enjoyed in the sun, early on a summer morning over looking the ocean. And I thought no harm would come of enjoying a few holiday espresso's. So, this inevitably led to bringing coffee home, purchasing a lovely manual espresso maker and in a short period creating it as a daily habit. Because that little boost, tricked my mind into thinking it was happy.

the kids showing us how to enjoy simple pleasures

After about a month I started to notice some changes, my energy dropped, I woke up everyday feeling like I had gone clubbing til the early hours, drank them out of spirits then aged 70years in my sleep! The headaches came, dehydration, the need for that daily boost started filling my mind. And little by little the black poison started eating away at my mind.... those happiness boosts clearly came at a price.




Not long before this I had been very healthy, fit and lived a very active life, with no side effects, now life started to become overwhelming, I didn't have anything left in my tank at the end of each day, instead of my life being about the bigger picture and using every day to create the context of a life I loved, life was about getting through the days, and then crashing, not sleeping properly, waking up feeling like hell, then starting again. Happiness eluded me in a way I had never before experienced.

lunch in the van, pure heaven

So this feeling got a bit old. I stopped the coffee. That's when  it really hit, the anger, sadness, feeling a bit depressed at some point in the day. I'm past all of that now and feeling like my old self again, but i now have an experience in giving up coffee and completely empathise with those around me that are doing the same.

And this is when it happened, I realised that I had spent those weeks/months lost inside of getting to the end of the day, getting to the end of the week, getting somewhere, anywhere, but not here. Somewhere that the grass was greener, that's where happiness is hiding. And in this fruitless journey to happiness it hit me, happiness is not a thing that one finds at the end of a journey, therefore searching for it is pointless. It's not about the pursuit of happiness, but the happiness of the pursuit. Enjoy now, because this is it, no later, no tomorrow, no someday.

happy family on our travels