How I Found True Happiness By Discovering My ‘Mantra’ And Living By It For 30 Days

“What we think, we become.” – Buddha

Everyone should have a Mantra. It could be a word, phrase, or even a sound that grounds you and brings you inner peace. You can truly transform your life and surroundings through the power of thought. It’s critical that, as much as you make sure your body get’s all the nutrients it needs to survive, to also feed your mind and soul with it’s neccessities for viability and self preservation. To remove the toxicity in your life, you have to stop all your toxic habits and thoughts first. 

As different as we all are, we’ve all experienced a feeling or sense of something that we didn’t quite know there was an actual word or meaning for it. Although our perceptions and responses will always vary, we usually have very similar senses to moments, smells, emotions, and people. 

In my journey to discover my own mantra to live by, I started by asking myself 4 questions.

1. Am I an Optimist or a Realist?

Do I need hope and positivity to encourage me, or do I need a more attainable and realistic answer to my problems?

2.   What do I most desire?

If I were going to die tomorrow, who or what would be the last thing I gave most of my energy to? What is going to make me the happiest and most content in my final moments of life?

3.   What is preventing me from getting the thing I most desire?

Most mantras are closely related to internal promises you make to yourself. You need to know what you are setting your focus towards and how to no longer allow yourself, or something else, to keep you from obtaining it. 

4. What makes me feel the most empowered?

What is it that gives you new perspective and helps you become the best version of yourself? This is a heavy and crucial question so don’t just answer blindly, truly think about it in depth. What get’s you out of bed every morning, keeps you going throughout the day, and makes you want a long life to experience it as much as possible?

My Answers;

1. Am I an Optimist or a Realist?

I am 1000% an optimist. I see the beauty and good in everything which sets me up to be more vulnerable to my circumstances and others around me.

2.   What do I most desire?

The feeling of contentment no matter where I am or what I am experiencing. With this comes the complete love, acceptance, and awareness of myself so I don’t watch my life from the sidelines, and I actually start living it to the fullest sooner rather than later.

3.   What is preventing me from getting the thing I most desire?

As much as I would love to say something else always gets in my way, I am my own biggest obstacle. I spend way too much time overanalyzing minute details that do not matter in the end. I get hung up on circumstances that I know are not permanent and end up prolonging my hurt and suffering, which in turn, delays my happiness.

4. What makes me feel the most empowered?

After a lot of reflection and thought, what truly empowers me is simply feeling. The good, the bad, everything. Not numbing myself to avoid the pain but actually feeling it all because it let’s me know that I am alive and have something afraid of losing.

When I put it all together, I realized that I am an optimistic person who treasures having love and respect for myself so I can be better for those around me. I believe that keeping myself preserved and not numb in my current state is crucial to my well being and evolution into who I need to be. I can sometimes get in my own way by overthinking, but I treasure enjoying the good and bad in my life because it just means I have something valuable I cherish.

After I answered the questions, I did research…. a lot of it. 

I looked at other peoples mantras, empowering and affirming thoughts to recite daily, and even studied the act of opening or awakening your different chakras to promote peace and abundance in your life. 

What I found inspired me to find something to tell myself and change my thought process to create a better life that promotes happiness and the contentment I so desperately wanted.

The Mantra I discovered for myself was this;

I release myself from things that no longer serve my purpose, I am present in every aspect of my journey, and in awe of the beauty I choose to create in my life every day.

Once I discovered this, I made it a point to tell myself this three times a day for a month. I made notes in my phone and set alarms to remind myself to do this. I wanted to make it a habit so I could actually see if there were benefits to finding a mantra and implementing it into your everyday life.

Here’s what I found;

1. My self love sky rocketed. I no loner found my worth in anything other than myself. The opinions and comments that would usually bring down my confidence and mood, no longer affected me. I knew I couldn’t control them and their actions, but I could control by responses to them.
2. I refused to allow anyone around me to put me down because their intentions would never fully align with my own. This made it easy to deal with challenging people because their end goal was certainly not the same as mine and giving them any power over myself and my emotions would only effect me and my day, not theirs.
3. I stopped doubting my ability to change my circumstances. With this, I chose to move on from past hurt and resentment I had been letting cage me into a person I had outgrown a long time ago. The things that were hard and I let continue to hurt me, I released myself from. I chose to overcome them on my own terms.
4. I allowed myself to feel things I had once buried down deep. The cool part was knowing that there was a purpose to the pain and that it had an expiration date on it. This gave me insight to what was actually a priority in my life and pushed me to always pursue more of it despite the possibility of failing or getting hurt again. 
5. I no longer got in my own way. I didn’t talk myself out of taking chances or putting myself out there to be criticized. I encouraged myself to do it because no matter what, my opinion of myself and my happiness was the only thing that mattered. I would have that despite anything else. Failing would not take that away, it would just help me learn from it and deepen my own certainty in my identity.
6. I was genuinely happy for the first time in my entire life. I wasn’t trying to convince everyone else I was happy and content, I simply was. I could be happy on my own. I loved every past failure and challenge I had been through because it made me able to accept the happiness that was always meant for me and let go of what wasn’t.

I encourage you to try this. Not only find your mantra, but challenge yourself to truly live by it for 30 days. You can read affirmations and study the process of finding true happiness, but you have to make the change eventually in how you think to get you there. Choose to no longer accept your circumstances that you are unhappy with and change the way you think to transform the quality of your life.