{"id":2494,"date":"2013-04-30T03:00:19","date_gmt":"2013-04-30T07:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lettinggo\/?p=2494"},"modified":"2013-04-29T09:53:43","modified_gmt":"2013-04-29T13:53:43","slug":"a-mistaken-idea-about-happiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2013\/04\/a-mistaken-idea-about-happiness.html","title":{"rendered":"A Mistaken Idea about Happiness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Question:<\/b> Happiness is elusive! How do I let go of an ever-present feeling of being discontented? If there is one weed in a field of roses, you can bet the weed is what I will see.<\/p>\n<p><b>Answer:<\/b> When it comes to discontentment or any other unhappiness, we are making a similar painful mistake that is taking us further and further away from real rescue. We believe that the inner voices within us, that so readily point out the discontentment in our lives, are doing this pointing from some safe harbor of contentment that we can reach only by following their directions. But a harbor wouldn\u2019t even be necessary if these same thoughts and feelings hadn\u2019t whipped up a storm in the first place!<\/p>\n<p><i>The false self is trying endlessly to get your attention in order to point out to you that there is something missing in your life. <\/i>Your feelings of discontentment are the very nature of the false self with which you have unknowingly identified. This is why you must never do anything about your discontentment because <i>it is not your discontentment<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t be afraid of not having something to do. Try to remember that what you really want isn\u2019t just to <i>feel<\/i> different, but to <i>be<\/i> different. Let the feelings fade and disappear, and with them the false self.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question: Happiness is elusive! How do I let go of an ever-present feeling of being discontented? If there is one weed in a field of roses, you can bet the weed is what I will see. Answer: When it comes to discontentment or any other unhappiness, we are making a similar painful mistake that is&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":232,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,514],"tags":[279,647,1611,37,288,1061,1612],"class_list":["post-2494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enlightenment-self-realization","category-wholeness-happiness","tag-contentment","tag-discontentment","tag-false-self","tag-fear","tag-identification","tag-inner-voices","tag-whats-missing"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Mistaken Idea about Happiness - Letting Go with Guy Finley<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2013\/04\/a-mistaken-idea-about-happiness.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Mistaken Idea about Happiness - Letting Go with Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Question: Happiness is elusive! How do I let go of an ever-present feeling of being discontented? If there is one weed in a field of roses, you can bet the weed is what I will see. 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His ideas cut straight to the heart of our most important personal and social issues - relationships, success, addiction, stress, peace, happiness, freedom - and lead the way to a higher life. Finley is the Founder and Director of Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit Center for Spiritual Discovery. He is the acclaimed author of \"The Secret of Letting Go\" and more than 45 other books and audio programs that have sold over two million copies in 26 languages worldwide. His work is widely endorsed by doctors, business professionals, celebrities, and religious leaders of all denominations. Through Life of Learning Foundation, Guy has presented over 5,000 unique self-realization seminars to thousands of grateful students throughout North America and Europe over the past 20 years and has been a guest on over 700 television and radio shows, including national appearances on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and NPR. The Foundation's popular Key Lesson e-mails featuring inspirational quotes by Guy are read each week by a hundred thousand subscribers in 142 countries. Guy speaks four times each week on inner-life principles at Life of Learning Foundation's home in Merlin, Oregon. These meetings are ongoing and open to the public. For more information about Life of Learning Foundation, Guy Finley, and their life-changing messages, visit guyfinley.org. \"Guy Finley is...one of the leading experts at the forefront of human potential.\" -Nightingale Conant \"Guy Finley has helped millions live fuller, more peaceable lives.\" -Barnes and Noble","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.guyfinley.org","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Guy-Finley-260924340633\/","https:\/\/x.com\/guy_finley"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/author\/gfinley"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/232"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2495,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2494\/revisions\/2495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}