Many of us, or most of us, are trying to find happiness outside of ourselves. Happiness is an inner game and should be pursued on the inside. If we continue to look on the outside we are going to be disappointed as we always look for more and ultimately happiness becomes the end of the rainbow, something we can never reach.

How we define happiness is the key to our success of finding it inside of ourselves. For example the first few months of blogging I wanted to make a million pounds and follow people like Steve Pavlina, Darren Rowse, Debbie Weil, Robert Scoble and Seth Godin but I quickly learned I was not going to make that. I did lose heart but I kept on writing and I wondered why I did keep writing. The answer was of course because I loved the writing and the possibility that some people might find my articles useful. From then on I wrote because I loved writing, I wrote because it might help other people, not because it was all about the money. What happened then was that the money started coming in and more ideas came my way and now that I concentrate on the writing the money side takes care of itself and I intend it to keep on taking care of itself until I can finally do what I love doing full time; either writing for the blog or giving seminars.

We have to take time to stop and think about our lives every now and again and re-evaluate what we are doing and whether or not we are happy inside or chasing the rainbow.

One of the ways you can test your happiness is by testing your unhappiness, sound strange.

Okay, here's how it works. (Warning! this is a very powerful exercise so be prepared)

Think of something that would make you unhappy; for example losing your house, or losing your family. Reflect on that for a moment, what would your feelings be: sad, miserable, lonely, suicidal, and really go for it and try to imagine the thing that would make you unhappy. When I do this exercise I imagine losing my family and I really do get to the point of being tearful (okay I admit it, I do get tearful). Now, come out of the scene you were in and look at what you have. For example if you pictured losing your family, look at your family now. How does it make you feel? I always feel extremely grateful and look at them in a different way as if I have been given a second chance with them. This feeling lasts a long time before I slip back into my normal loving self. However, what it does is let me be thankful and never take them for granted.

So it is with life. We are so busy chasing the rainbow of happiness we forget what makes us happy now. We have to get that feeling back. So many of us are working hard to make money, working long hours, nearly killing ourselves all in the pursuit of happiness for us and our families when in fact if we loved our families first and loved the job we were doing we would find that happiness here and now and not in the future.

How many of us have seem something on TV and said 'It really makes you appreciate what you've got'? I bet most of us have said this however how long has it taken us to forget this and get on with our lives and forget what we really have!

For any of our dreams to happen in the future, and they will if we intend them long enough and work at it, we have to be thankful for what we have in the here and now.

I am thankful for my wife, my two boys, my dog, my house, my job, my mum, dad, sisters nieces and nephews and my health and I am thankful too you for reading this.

About the Author

Steve Aitchison is a life coach, father, husband, support worker, and alcohol counsellor. He busies himself with his family, his blog (http://www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog), work (http://www.bradlewdesigns.co.uk), and life coaching (http://www.stevenaitchison.co.uk).