The Key To Happiness. Really.

I have found the key to ultimate, lifelong happiness, and I am eager to share it. 
Of course, there are many keys to happiness and I'm sure that you have heard them all, but since it takes a lifetime to try to do all of those things well, the truth is that the real key to happiness is accepting that unhappiness is inevitable.

It sounds too simple, but for some reason most of us persistently have an all-or-nothing attitude.  We believe that success means living "happily ever after" - getting married and having blissful love for the rest of our lives, landing a great job and securing financial comfort, or having children and filling the rest of your days with joyful Kodak moments. 
Of course, logically we know that these things aren't reality, but we still seem to subconsciously hold on to these dreams and wishes in our hearts, and whenever any problem comes along we become completely crushed and fall into despair.  Then, when things eventually turn around again, we go right back to feeling like it's only uphill from there.

It's easy to see why all of these ups and downs can be disheartening to the point of general unhappiness when we always judge the overall success of our life based on whatever our present condition might happen to be. 

On the contrary, Buddhist mindfulness practices talk about viewing life as the waves of the sea - as sure as you can count on the tide rolling in, you know for sure that it will go back out again.  But, one is necessary for the other to happen. 
I love this analogy, because if we can adopt this view and come to fully accept that our whole life WILL consist of ups and downs, then we will expect and appreciate both and find true happiness in not having false standards for ourselves.  

When we are in bad times, we can take comfort in knowing that they will pass, rather than being filled with anxiety that our whole life is ruined and nothing good will ever happen to us again.  Likewise, when times are good we must always keep in mind that it won't last forever, so that we enjoy it fully while it's there and then not feel blindsided when the next challenge arises.

Think about romantic love - the most universal example:  When things are happy and blissful, you feel like your partner is perfect.  All the bad things fade into the background and you can hear angels singing as you remember all of your happiest memories.  But then, when you've had a nasty fight, suddenly the bad times seem to out number the good, you question why you ever committed to this person and you can't help but think about breaking up because you can't see any other way that this could be fixed. 
Why do we have such extreme thoughts, even though we've seen this unending relationship cycle numerous times in ourselves and others around us?  What if instead, we trained ourselves in the depth of despair to think "How is this going to be solved this time?"  rather than "Will things ever be happy again??"

Let me be clear - it sounds easier than it really is, so after reading this you're probably thinking "OK, I got that.  I should have true happiness now, right?"  It's not enough to simply have an understanding of this concept - you really have to sit with it for a while to completely incorporate it into your life.  Then, you have to learn techniques to keep yourself calm and grounded in the heat of emotion.  The trick is to never allow yourself to get TOO dragged down or TOO elated.  True happiness is maintaining a relative balance of emotions through all situations.

Think about it.  This is deep, but I promise that it will make you much more satisfied with your life and relationships.