3 Essential Steps to Greater Happiness

3 Essential Steps to Greater Happiness

“I WANT.”

Five simple letters. Two words. Yet, there are probably no other two words in the English language that cause such powerful suffering.

The pull of wanting is immensely strong. Like an emotional black hole, it can drag you away from the light of grace and into the darkness of need. You become detached from the present moment. Instead of experiencing the joy, meaning, and peace that is your natural state, you endlessly orbit the bottomless pit of want, a thrall to an emptiness that can never be filled.


In short, these two tiny words equal pain and frustration. Let me show you how:

I wanted to be happy. I wanted to be smart. I wanted to be successful. I wanted financial independence. I wanted to have kids. Lots of them. And I wanted to be loved (for a while I thought by George Clooney!?!) Oh, and I also wanted to have long, thin, beautiful legs. Seriously, Gisele Bundchen legs!


I wanted it all, with all of passion and conviction I could muster.


But my wants remained loftily stubborn. Out of reach. In fact, for the majority of my life, the absence of checkmarks on my “want list” (and my bitchier days, my “deserve list”) made me firmly believe that life was against me.


I was a classic victim, sure that I had an oversized bullseye on my back. My life, I felt, was downright unfair, so I took every opportunity to remind the universe of this fact.


All because my wants weren’t showing up.


An Unwanted Guest

Crisis became my constant companion. On those days when I wasn’t actively dealing with perceived calamity or despair, I was always planning and waiting for the next catastrophe that I was convinced was just around the corner. It was like having an unwanted guest in your house. You may not always be able to see them, but you always know that they are there.


My marriage was a disaster and my husband was continually unfaithful. Our adopted son had alarming behavioral issues – not a surprise given the high degree of dysfunction within our tiny family. As well, I was clinically depressed after 15 years of infertility, and to drown out my feelings of self-righteous victimhood, 5 o’clock and my glass of red wine never arrived fast enough.


No matter the good things that did come my way, their appeasement was fleeting. Every moment measured against the story of what was missing. Each argument was exacerbated by the comparison to a non-existent relationship for which I desperately longed. Every hurtful accusation was amplified by the void of self-love. Multitudes of parenting missteps were held up to the scrutiny of a God who I believed had deemed me unfit to carry children. Every failed holiday was measured against a dream that existed solely in my head.


A Sudden Awakening


Then, in one of the most crippling moments of my life, one of the greatest things happened. I had an awakening; a sacred moment of expanded consciousness.


I discovered that it wasn’t the absence of these things that was causing my horrible, no-good, very bad life. It was my rigid attachment to these wants as a required outcome for my happiness that kept me disconnected from my authentic potential. My staunch stubbornness continually measured real life against those external desires and as a result, I suffered every day.


Real life didn’t stand a chance.


My bottomless emptiness was desperately searching for fulfillment outside of me, convinced that the arrival of any one of these desires would deliver me over to the peace and joy that I so desperately searched.


And if there is one thing I know FOR SURE from personal experience (and from the thousands of women I’ve had the honor of meeting across this globe) you may be lucky enough to possess your dream list of material things… jewelry, clothes, cars, facelifts, beach houses, private planes, handsome lovers, and yes, Gisele Bundchen legs – but at the end of the day these things won’t bring you lasting joy.


The 3 Steps to Happiness

Joy. Meaning. Real happiness.

These things are there for the taking, if we only have the courage to reach out and make them ours. It isn’t difficult to reject want and the suffering that it brings. All it takes to begin experiencing life the way it was meant to be lived is to take three simple steps towards the happiness that you so richly deserve.

Go to JanDesai.com  right now and download my free audio training “How to Reclaim Your Dreams”. In it, you’ll learn the three steps that I use every day to banish want from my life, replacing it with connectivity that brings real meaning, crazy joy for the real miracles and opportunities that surround us every day, and true happiness that comes from knowing that I am living the life that I was meant to lead.

Don’t be a slave to “want” another day. Download my audio training today and begin living your own best life.

Live Authentically-