No matter what we’re doing, we’re all pretty much chasing the same thing.

Excellent foot wear.

Kidding.

Although there’s lots to be said about excellent foot wear. And having excellent foot wear, like any other aspiration in life, does lead to that other thing we’re all chasing:

Happiness.

Folks who want a ton of money think that money is their ticket to happiness.

Folks who want a ton of wordly success? Same thing.

Even spiritual seekers who renounce the world to find enlightenment are chasing after that elusive happiness ticket.

But what if we’re all chasing the wrong goal?

I recently saw a video that’s upended my ideas about what I want. Or what I think I want.

In this video, we hear from a woman named Penny Wittbrodt who had a near-death experience. It’s worth watching the whole video to hear about all she learned and experienced on the other side.

(FYI: Penny is a Christian and refers to God as “He.” She views the experience through the lens of traditional Christianity, though it also upends a lot of her beliefs, which is fascinating to see.)

She covers a lot of ground in the video, but there was one thing she said that especially stood out for me.

“We have this really screwed up vision of good and bad. For us ‘good’ is when nothing is wrong and everything is right. And in the spiritual realm, good is forward motion. No matter how awful it feels. If you’re moving forward, you’re growing, you’re affecting the lives of other people, even if you’re doing it through grief or whatever, that’s considered good [in the spiritual realm].”

I’ll admit, even though I’m a super spiritual woo-woo person, there’s still a part of me that thinks that when things are challenging, something’s wrong.

Indeed, in the “consciousness is creative” community I’m a part of, there’s a notion – mistaken though it may be – that since you’re creating everything with your consciousness, if things are hard you just need to change your consciousness to “fix” it.

I don’t think this is true. I think we all have challenges in life, some of which are not “solved” by simply changing our beliefs. Nevertheless, there is enormous power in our attitude and how we approach our challenges.

And after watching this video, it gave me even more ammunition to shift my attitude about difficulties and hard times.

Labeling the experience of facing our challenges and moving through them as “good” – as dualistic as that may be – has helped me reframe my valleys and hard days.

Ms. Wittbrodt goes on to say:

“[Facing your challenges is] doing good work. Even though all the circumstances around it suck. You’re still good, it’s not bad. You’re moving forward. Now, the day you start sitting in that recliner, and you stop interacting with the world, and you’re just in that – I’m gonna do what makes me comfortable. That’s bad. Even though nothing bad is happening. That’s not what we’re here for. We are not here to be sedentary creatures that have no effect on the world around us. There’s no point in you being here if that’s what you’re going to do.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with sitting in a recliner. We all need a bit of rest from time to time.

But we have to get off the chair.

We have to move through stuff. All of it. Including and especially the hard stuff.

With that in mind, when something challenging is happening, instead of asking:

How did my consciousness create this? I can ask:

Am I moving forward no matter what? Am I hanging in there? Am I using my consciousness to heal my life and the life of others?

That’s the goal.

We can still examine the thoughts and beliefs that may have drawn us to the challenging situation in the first place, but ideally from a place of healing and moving forward. Not from a place of self-blame or condemnation.

Paradoxically enough, shifting the goal away from happiness to moving-forward-no-matter-what is also the stance that’s most likely to result in happiness.

Expecting to be blissfully happy all the time, on the other hand, is a set up.

A set up that’s more likely to leave us unhappy.

So I’m changing my goal.

I’m trading in the happiness goal for one that’s paradoxically more likely to make me happy.

And if I happen to purchase some excellent footwear to aid my forward motion, all the better.

What’s your experience with moving-forward-no-matter-what? Share your comments below!

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