I’ll be happy when…

A recent coaching conversation had my coaching client recall that from childhood, her mother had implied that happiness was conditional. She recalled different stages of her life when her mother would say, “You’ll be happier when you’ve passed your exams,” or “You’ll be happier when you get a new job,” or “You’ll be happier if you just do what I advise you to do.”

This is now showing up in her adult life where she puts herself under pressure to achieve, complete, finalise before she can allow herself to feel happy. Her learned pattern is that happiness cannot show up unless….

This theme is very common in adulthood and as such, I was able to share with her a poem I had written for another coaching client who was living with the same misconception.

I’ll be happy when I..

Lose the weight

Earn more money

Buy a new house

Somewhere sunny

Grow my hair

Have it cut

Find a way out

Of this rut

Win the Lotto

Change career

Just get through

Another year

Smooth my wrinkles

Plump my lips

Tone my legs

And lose my hips

Hit my goal

Meet ‘The One’

Have no worries

Have more fun

Your happiness is not ‘out there’

In some imagined place

It’s here and now, within you

Not something you must chase

It’s not a destination, some utopia to find

It’s in the journey you create

In heart, in soul, in mind

© Gillian Wood