Happiness Is an Inside Job

At certain times, especially when exhausted, like I am this week, I find myself discerning a deep sense of woe swimming silently beneath my psyche.

And to be truthful, reflecting on that statement, I'm embarrassed to openly admit this for fear of sounding like a victim. I had to ‘just get on with it’ as a child, and so to write about this brings about a feeling of shame and inadequacy.

Not so long ago, I gained some clarity that this anguish isn’t all because of the current uncertainty in my personal circumstances, but an unconscious mindset snag. The snag being in the way that I feel that reaching accomplishments, like a healthy income, would help banish my blues.

In addition, I have always believed that when I am eventually in a position to buy my own home after a lifetime of living in other people’s properties, I would be happy.

In this home, I imagined a beautiful garden, a soft cream interior and a wardrobe brimming with expensively cut clothes. After two decades of tight finances and having to prioritise high rent and bills alone, these hopes and visions were moulded in the happiness I was seeking.

Yet I've come to realise that what I am truly yearning for is to feel safe and for some certainty in my life, although certainty doesn't truly exist. And somehow along the way, my search for happiness was a temporary guise.

After growing up in a broken home surrounded by absolute poverty, I have pined for my own home, armoured with options and choices. I craved to reach a place of utopia to transport me away from my deep sense of not enoughness. Still, I can see in ways, I was trying to reach a paradigm that is only in my head—a place that would move me away from that wound that ricochets from my sense of self.

When I start to compare where others are in life, I then grapple with feeling unworthy, which ultimately leads to my feelings of despair. I know we can all fall into the trap of thinking we haven't achieved much when we live in the comparison mindset.

I often forget the significant progress and steps I've taken to reach where I am today, despite not having the material evidence. That, in itself, is something utterly worth celebrating for any of us who struggle in life.

Thankfully, I am able to reframe my perspective with a simple mindset calibration and remind myself that I am not my thoughts and that the thoughts that play out in my mind are separate from who I truly am. I am doing okay — and I am aware that I have been here before — stuck in a headspace that just sucks, and it's only because I am exhausted.

So many of us tell ourselves when we have that new phone, that holiday, those followers, that partner, that income and that success — we will reach this place called happiness. And yet, even though at least a few of these scenarios will happen for us, isn’t it strange how that feeling of utopia is so short-lived!

We then fall back to square one, as if we are living in a parallel universe, where the rules are: there are no rules. Because life doesn’t work like that — happiness isn’t something that dreams and films are made of, happiness is an inside job.

We can't expect to be bathed in joy for every living moment of our lives. All of us face an array of difficult circumstances and tough decisions to make day to day.

There will be times when we can’t make ends meet or are at an agonising crossroad, and the more painful times of having to say goodbye to loved ones, whether this is the end of a relationship or a passing over at the end of a life.

We will find ourselves having to work through a whole range of complex emotions and the emotions that unconsciously stem from our uncaged thought processes.

I have found I'm able to create a sense of calmness when I honour what I am feeling in each bespoke situation. To either meet my exhaustion, sadness, and indecisions with the space they call for.

And at other times, when I sense I am mentally or physically challenged, to confront the challenge and ask what is truly expected of myself from myself and not from the world.

Although this week, I am falling short of being kind to myself.

When I dig deeper, though, I can see I trigger a lack of self-worth, and the unloving comments that live in my psyche raise their ugly heads. I am reacting to the ideology of the world and what I should have and be to achieve happiness.

Still, because I know happiness is an inside job, I know it's down to me how I'm going to feel once I wake up, no matter how low I may feel that day.

Will I choose to be grateful for what I have, or will I lack self-compassion because I still haven’t achieved the things for which I am aiming? Will I acknowledge and feel proud of what I am doing to work towards achieving my dreams and goals?

That is the key for me: remembering to have self-compassion and be grateful for all that I have.

^^^

Gratitude is a powerful tool to help us feel content, even in the littlest of circumstances. I’m grateful for my health after suffering from chronic pain for too long. I feel so fortunate to have access to food and water, although costly — we still have more than others in the world. I am extremely grateful to my boyfriend for a roof over my head after I received a no-fault eviction from my landlady, after renting her property for thirteen years.

Positive Psychology says, “There is a direct link between happiness and gratitude. Expressing gratitude brings about happiness for the one giving thanks. The more someone is thankful or feels gratitude, the less there is time or room for negative thoughts.”

And to cement the truth in the science behind how our brain’s chemistry changes for the better with the practice of daily gratitude, Brain Balance says, “In short, gratitude can boost the neurotransmitter serotonin and activate the brain stem to produce dopamine. Dopamine is our brain’s pleasure chemical. The more we think positive, grateful thoughts, the healthier and happier we feel.”

“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it” — Eckhart Tolle

Just leaving my house earlier today, I remember how much a walk can dramatically shift my mindset. Yet I forget this simple fact all the time. Walking is completely natural, uplifting and oozes a sense of gratitude within me; all my troubles seem so far away. I breathe in the scene and feel complete happiness. And it doesn't cost a thing.

My boyfriend has kindly gifted me a strength training membership; another thing to be grateful for, which I am. Yet a lot of the time when I walk up to the gym, I feel I don't want to do it because I don't have the energy. Yet always when I am done, I am full of gratitude and energy—zapped full of happy endorphins. I actually enjoy lifting, but my thoughts can be so easily manipulative.

If we don’t keep ourselves balanced with habits of gratitude, walking in nature, exercising, and serving others, we can so easily fall into an abyss of dark and detrimental thought patterns. It's not rocket science, but it is proven by science that happiness is an inside job.

© Chantal Weiss 2026. All Rights Reserved.