You are chasing a rabbit, a fox and a polar bear.
Sorry, I got the last bit wrong.
The polar bear is chasing you.
You chase the rabbit for food.
You are chasing the fox to move it away from your chickens.
The polar bear is chasing you, to attack you.
Everyone has a different motivation.
Sometimes we chase people because they just robbed our house.
You chase the robber, the robber does not chase you.
What do we do when someone steals our happiness?
We might chase them and catch them, but how do we prove they have our happiness?
Can happiness really be stolen?
Or does the suspected thief replace it with a fake.
They tell you that you should be grateful for their help.
That you are lucky to have them in your life.
They try to confuse the situation by throwing up lots of clever arguments.
But you know that you were happier before they came into your life.
Someone has stolen your joy because when you look into your joy jar, it is nearly empty.
A short while ago it was nearly full.
Very suspicious?
And where did this tinge of sadness come from.
It was not here last week.
It has appeared recently.
What a puzzle, what a mystery?

The end result can manifest as a very real lack of motivation.
Help, I need someone to encourage me..!!

Motivation and encouragement are free.
But that is a problem, because it means you cannot buy it.
If we could buy motivation, we would be fully motivated every day.
We would high-five everyone at work.
We would jump out of bed, full of joy and energy.
So if you cannot buy motivation, you also cannot buy happiness.
You can buy things that make you happy.
You are happy to be able to pay your bills.
But after you have paid your bills and purchased your new car.
What do we do about our happiness.

Maybe we could steal some.
If people can steal our happiness, why not steal theirs.
The problem is this.
You can steal a person’s happiness.
But as that happiness leaves them, it disappears.
You cannot transfer someone else’s happiness into your life.
It has to be given as a gift from that person to you.
You cannot do it by force.

So here is how it works.
You can steal happiness by making someone un-happy.
But you will not be happy.
The trick to receiving happiness is to give it away in the form of a gift.
Everyone knows the joy of giving.
When you give a gift, you feel happy.

Let’s go back to chasing the rabbit and the fox.
You are chasing them for a very logical reason.
To eat the rabbit.
To protect your chickens you are chasing the fox.

Next minute you are chasing a robber down the street.
Why, because they have robbed your house.
Makes sense.

Thoughts work in a similar way.
You can feed on a thought.
You can drive a thought away.
Or a thought can chase you and catch you and imprison you.

So, thoughts can steal our happiness.
Yes, because happiness manifests through your brain.
Here is the big problem.
How to control your thoughts?
This is nearly impossible.

The answer is, look at what you can control.
You can control your actions.
Decide today to be a giver and not a taker.
Decide to be generous.
When you make someone else happy, you get happy.
Or take the short way to happiness that everyone around you is doing.

Buy a dog.

Written by Tony Egar.