I had the wonderful opportunity recently to hang out with two of my daughters, celebrating our birthdays. In conversation over lunch, I was expressing some apprehension about something when one of them said, “Maybe you need to change your thinking about that.” It wasn’t said harshly or critically at all. Her point was that the picture that I had in my mind about the subject may have been correct at one point in my life, but not now, because I am in a different stage. She was absolutely right! And, in thinking about it, I wondered how many other things I may need to change my thinking about.

I wish I could remember where I read it, but I read a book where the author was talking about the way we often limit how happy we can be because of our “musts”. This must happen before I can be happy. For instance, I can’t be happy until I lose 10 pounds. I won’t be happy until I’m married. I will be happy when I am making _____ amount of money. You get the idea.

We all have a picture of how our life should be and what we want out of life. And, we need goals and direction in our lives, however, I think that sometimes we hold that picture so tightly in our minds that there is no room for anything different and we fail to enjoy life as it is.

As I pondered my daughter’s comment this morning, I realized that I am very much like one of our sons. He is an incredibly talented artist, but few people know it. When he paints or draws, he has a picture in his head that he is trying to translate to canvas or paper. However, if it doesn’t turn out exactly how he sees it in his head, if even one tiny thing is “off”, he scraps the whole thing. He will whitewash over it and start all over or trash it completely. I have been saddened over the years when I’ve seen what he was working on and it was wonderful, only to find out later that it got scraped. Consequently, his talent is hidden and the world is denied the pleasure of it.

I don’t know about you, but my life looks surprisingly different from the picture I held when I was young. Little has turned out the way I thought it would. Life has a way of throwing us curve balls and taking us down different paths than we expected to travel. Those are the things, however, that add color, dimension and texture to the painting of our lives. What a disservice we do to ourselves when we can’t be happy because it looks different than we expected, or when we limit the number of ways we can be happy because we have too many “musts”!

The time to change something is the moment we realize it needs to change. That time is now for me! I want to release my grip on life. I want to free myself to enjoy every minute of my fleeting time on this earth. I want my life, even the unexpected twists and turns that color it, to be a blessing to others.

Maybe you can identify with my struggle. If so, why not join me in surveying your list of “musts” and change the way you think about them so that you can be happy? Happiness truly is a choice. Give yourself as many ways to experience it as possible by letting go of your self-imposed restrictions.