wellbeing – holly malmsten

What You Don’t Know About Happiness Can Cost You Everything!

I am so excited to share that I just held a live workshop this past Saturday as a pre-launch for my new curriculum called Transformed, Healed, and Free. I was planning on spending all last week doing the last bit of preparation to make sure everything was organized and ready to be presented smoothly and effectively.

However, so many intrusions, interruptions, and interferences happened and my week leading up to my workshop went nothing like I planned.

I was planning to continue my blog last Monday and to share the next substances that are greater than happiness, but my week went haywire.

To name a few situations … my daughter was in the hospital and I spent several days driving to and from Dr’s appointments, as well as mental and emotional stress from being concerned for her.

One of my current clients also had a crisis and needed emergency help.

Also, every kind of technical difficulty that can happen pretty much happened the day before my workshop which was being videoed. We lost our car keys and couldn’t get into the building where I was holding my event because the key was on the set of car keys that my 2nd daughter misplaced – ugg! I was not able to set up ahead of time and there was a lot of extra stress and scrambling to pull off a great workshop.

But, All Is Well!

Just pressing through all the extra difficulty and relying upon and trusting God’s goodness got me through the challenges.

My daughter is doing well and seems to have recovered from a supposed asthma attack, even though she does not have asthma. We found the car keys and left the house at 6:00 a.m. to go set up before my workshop. My whole family helped with that part. I think we will be able to put together a good video with what we had to work with, and the event itself was wonderful.

It was a dream come true to release the message in my heart in a packaged course that will give anyone the steps they need to be transformed, healed, and free. I am excited to get my course published online asap, so keep watch for it.

So,

now I am back in action and grateful to continue my blog series on Happiness.

I want to reveal the next 2 substances that are greater than and outlast mere happiness.

Greater Substances Cont’d…

2. Faith – a rich and timeless substance.

Faith is a substance that is life-giving to our internal state of being. Faith is life-giving because yet again, faith transcends our earthly circumstances. Regardless of whether they are good or bad, faith is sustainable and is not based on what we see happening. By faith, we can trust and know that there are aspects of our lives being orchestrated behind the scenes and God is working on our behalf even when we do not see it. Faith gives us the motivation to persevere because we understand and believe that there are unseen components to our lives.

Just as I had to endure a crazy, exhausting, stressful, hectic week leading up to my workshop (that was very important to me), I clung on to faith because I knew that regardless of the badness, there were things at work that I was not able to see. I had faith to keep pushing through and override the stressors that were tempting into discouragement and negativity.

Now when I look back at the crazy week, I see only “minor interruptions” and my faith that kept me going.

3. Hope is another substance that gives true motivation to endure hard times. Hope keeps us going when we feel like giving up. Hope is so powerful that it even elevates us up above discouragement or despair. When we have hope, when can rejoice in our harships because it gives us a glimpse of the light at the end and we can sense that the other side of our adversity is out there, if we just continue to walk forward. Hope awakens us to the positive possibiliies that exist for us after coming through the other side of adversity.

Wow!

The substance of hope is one of the greatest that exists. Hope, endurance, perseverance, and character all go together and the substance of hope is so valuable and powerful. Anything that has great value is not easily obtainable or accessible. That is what adds to the value.

Hope is not obtained easily or effortlessly. It is obtained by facing distress, pressure, and trouble and pressing through and resolving to keep going until you come out the other side. You hold on to hope at all costs because it it produces endurance, perseverance, and strenghtens your character amidst the hardship.

The more we utilize hope and maintain it, the more of it we gain. It is a substance so great that once we really have it and mature in it, we become unstoppable and un discourageable. Happiness becomes a wonderful experience that we enjoy, but our life does not depend on it and we rest knowing that we do not have to strive for it or make happiness our ultimate goal.

We can live and operate in any and every season of life with assurance and hope, without disappointment.

Happiness inevitably disappoints because it does not last forever.

Hope never disappoints and is everlasting!

So yes,

I hope and pray that you can allow faith and hope to take greater precedence over happiness.

After all,

This is key if you want to be well and live well!

Check in next Monday for my next post where I will share more on this subject and shed some light on the final greater substances.

Be Well, Live Well

Holly Malmsten

What is Happiness?

Happiness is a state of being. It is a state that every human being seeks.

Happiness is an emotion that we have when we feel good and our life experiences are good.

Family walk on Butterfly Beach – makes me so happy
Embracing my role as a wife and mother, fully engaged and present – gives meaning and purpose

It is normal to try to orchestrate our lives around keeping a sense of happiness at all times.

No one enjoys feeling unhappy and no one would willingly let go of their happiness.

This all sound good, right? The desire to be happy is what drives most of our thinking, our actions, and behaviors Shouldn’t this be the driving force of our lives?

Does revolving our life around happiness really improve our lives, help us to grow, or cause us to feel more content?

Let’s Consider This:

Happiness is the good feeling we have when we get something good that we like or want or when our circumstances are pleasant. Good experiences and good circumstances are wonderful gifts and give us necessary boosts in our journey of life. But let me ask you this.

If happiness is based on circumstances, is it really a sustainable substance?

Is happiness something on which we can rely along the roller coaster of life?

The answer is quite obviously no. Happiness is temporary because It is based on wether or not our life is going well. Difficult circumstances or life challenges can drown out happiness instinatiously, and shift our internal state into quite a negative one.

So, if an emotional state that is so vulnerable to external cicumstances is what we are constantly trying to achieve and maintain, it seems like we would be in a constant battle of fighting to avoid pain and unhappiness and expending all of our energy and focus striving to get back to happiness.

Furthermore, when you did feel happy for a while, you would start to worry about loosing that happy feeling at some point.

“Ugg, as I am writing this, I am feeling exhausted just thinking about it.”

Living this way seems like a continuous struggle that only gets you what you want temporarily and comes and goes whenever your cicumstances change.

If there was something else out there, some greater substances that were stronger and deeper, that transcended our life cicumstances, that remained and sustained you through any and every kind of experience and cicumstance, would you want to know about it?

Do You Really Just Want To Be Happy?

As you see, happiness is only temporary and quite shallow. Happiness does not have substance because it is not realistically sustainable.

If you do not believe me, think of a little baby. Babies cry when they are unhappy and they learn very quickly that when they cry, someone will come to their rescue and change their situation for them. This system works quite well when they are newborns and need someone to care for them and help them.

However, would it make sense, to continue this as the baby got older?

Would it be beneficial to continuously cater to every unhappy moment, or to rush around fixing every situation where the baby was not happy, and to give the child anything and everything they wanted in order to keep the them happy?

Just living every moment to keep the baby happy, goodness that would be impossible. What would happen if the baby never experienced displeasure, discomfort, or unhappiness and the parent just spent every second of their day trying to keep the baby in a state of happiness? How do you think that baby would turn out later? Would they be able to handle life, relationships, work, disappointment, challenges, etc…. ?

That baby would be so spoiled and sadly live a very shallow existence and feel discontent most of the time.

There is Something Better, Stronger, and More Enduring!

I want to share some alternatives to mere happiness:

I do not want this first post on the happiness topic to be too long and I do not want anyone to disengage or loose focus before I get to the best part.

So, I will be sharing the substances that are greater, deeper, and more lasting than happiness in my next few posts.

I am so excited to share this info with as many people as possibe and shed more light on happiness.

Look for my post next week and subscribe if you would like it in you inbox immediately when I post it.

Blessings,

Holly Malmsten, mental and emotional wellness specialist