Elle Potter

How to be Happy and not be not happy.

My heart was suddenly louder than my head. No longer willing to be ignored or brushed aside, my intuition was shouting at me and I was not going to be able to make excuses anymore. Something wasn’t right, and all I knew was it was time to make a change.

I spent the rest of my day at work alternating between hiding in the bathroom and crying, going outside to make phone calls to the various members of my support system, and trying to keep my act together when my boss was around.

I’m a firm believer that we have multiple soulmates in our lives, and one of mine just happened to be right down the street from my work that afternoon. He walked over and sat on the floor of one of the studios with me while I curled up in a ball and cried.

Between hiccups and incomplete sentences, I kept repeating, “I don’t know what to do.” He listened as I tried to sort out everything I was feeling on the inside into complete thoughts on the outside, letting me be borderline hysterical. At one point, he quietly shared the most profound thing I’ve ever heard.

“I know for me, when my heart has already made its decision, the hardest part is saying it out loud.”

I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world. I was teaching yoga and helping run a studio. There were promises of starting a new studio, one I could call partly my own. I was going to lead teacher trainings. I was one of the lucky few that was calling Yoga her full-time career. Was I really going to walk away from something I had wanted? Something others were dying for?

And yet within that same flash of thought, I heard the resounding Yes. Yes, you are. Yes, because you are not happy and something is not right.

So I did. Once I finally understood that although my unhappiness was unexplainable at that moment in time, it was imperative to react for protection of my heart, I couldn’t imagine moving forward in the direction I had been going.

There is a difference between being humble and grateful for what you have when you don’t have much, and suffering quietly through your unhappiness because you think it’s all you have and it’s what you are supposed to do. Stop that. Stop that right now.

I can assure you, I had no plan. I just knew I could not possibly walk back into my job another day and pretend like I was okay. Later that same night, as I cried on the floor of my parents’ house while my mom fed me grilled cheese, I realized that making this decision meant things were going to change. Like, a move-back-in-with-the-parents change. Like, a be-flat-broke-for-an-undetermined-period-of-time change.

But for those of you who know me, you know that life didn’t become miserable. I opened myself up to possibilities. Things ended up better than okay. And I can see now how spot on my intuition was at the time.

I’ve never known anyone in my life that left a relationship, a job, a city, or any situation that was making them unhappy and didn’t eventually become stronger for it. Happier for it. More successful because of it. Turning your life upside down is never easy, but everything will come together if you allow yourself to be vulnerable enough through all the painful patches of change.

I promise.

How do I know? Shit. I don’t know. I just do. I just really, really do. And above all, I know that being unhappy is not your only option. And you don’t have to tell yourself it is anymore.

Has your heart already made its decision? It’s time to listen. If you do it now, the good stuff will come even sooner than if you wait until later.

Tags: change, happy