The one thing that is consistent in all of our relationships, experiences and life events is us. This is why our happiness has to begin with us. It is an internal awakening. We bring ourselves to every relationship and every situation. So changing our relationship or our situation might not necessarily improve things for us, because we are bringing ourselves along the way. We sometimes have to change ourself first.
This is why happiness begins with us, individually. We each have things that we consider to be essential to either our identity or our lifestyle, but if these things exist outside of ourselves, it can be hard for these things to help us find happiness. This is because the things in the world change, wear out and sometimes disappear.
We need things which are necessity, like food, water, a home and security. Beyond these things is the realm of what we want, not what we need. We sometimes get these things confused. The things that make us happy are things like creativity, connectedness, productivity, etc, things that come from within ourselves, from our interaction with the world. We need to move from being consumers to becoming creators, so we can create the life that allows us to be happy. Happiness is a state, a way of being, it is not something we go and get.
The Fullfilment Project 