A path to happiness
Some mornings, I cried
before I even got out of bed.
The sadness and pain ran so deep
that I felt as if I were drowning inside myself.
Happiness came and went
until I decided to hold on to it
with both hands.
That doesn’t mean I’m always happy,
that every thought is positive,
or that I live with complete certainty.
I still know pain and sadness.
But I no longer torment myself.
I came to understand that my happiness is my responsibility.
This is the path I wrote down:
Step one: take responsibility
Your children can’t make you happy.
Your partner can’t do it for you.
Neither can a beautiful home or car.
No one else can, and neither can anything outside you.
It begins with you.
Taking responsibility also means letting go of blame.
The clearest path to happiness starts
with changing your story.
There’s a reason we ask, “What’s your story?”
Your story becomes the melody of your life.
Stop for a moment. What are you telling yourself?
Is life hard or beautiful?
Is your story a happy one,
a romantic comedy, or a tragedy that never ends?
To change the story, you have to change your inner dialogue.
Here’s one rule: stop saying,
“I can’t” or “I have no strength.”
(The moment you say it, you drain your own strength.)
Say instead, “I can. I will succeed. Everything is working for my good.”
Then watch the magic happen.
Life is the journey, not just the destination.
So many people tell themselves, “I’ll be happy when I have money,
when the children grow up, when I find love, when…”
No.
There is only this moment, and I can enjoy it
even before I reach the destination.
Celebrate along the way.
Why?
Because patience is part of wisdom.
Let things unfold. Don’t rush them or force the process. Things take time, and sometimes only time reveals that this is how they were meant to be. Pick fruit too early and it may be bitter.
When someone fails or makes a mistake, as all of us do,
the unwise response is to give up.
The wiser response is to return to the starting point and begin again.
What this episode is about
Episode 60 asks, “How can I be happy?” Six ideas shape my answer:
- Personal responsibility: Happiness begins when we take responsibility for our lives and feelings instead of expecting someone else to make us happy.
- Changing your story: We need to question the stories we tell about our lives and change the language we use with ourselves.
- Enjoying the journey: If happiness has to wait until we reach a particular goal, we miss the life happening now.
- Patience and faith (emunah): Good things take time. Faith and patience are needed to see salvation and the process as a whole.
- Forgiveness and releasing anger: When we release anger and forgive others, we open ourselves to forgiveness and love.
- Changing our thoughts: Changing our thoughts can change our feelings and our reality.
The episode ends with a practical exercise: make a two-column list comparing the habits and circumstances of a time when you felt happy with the way you’re living now. Then use what you discover to begin creating those conditions again.
A deeper look at happiness with Gili Man Wolner
Life moves through challenges and pauses, joy and sadness. We all want happiness that feels real and lasts. In episode 60 of the Hebrew-language podcast The Truth Hurts (HaEmet Ko’evet), I explored the nature of happiness and how we can approach it in daily life. Here are the ideas, tools, and practical suggestions I shared.
Your happiness is your responsibility
After the previous episode, several people asked me the same question: “What can I do to be happy?”
My answer begins with something I return to again and again: you are responsible for your own happiness. Your children can’t do it for you. Neither can your partner, the people around you, money, possessions, or even a big house with a pool. Happiness begins when you take responsibility for creating calm and peace in your own heart.
Listen to the story you tell yourself
Where do you start? Pay attention to your story. We talk about this all the time, but ask yourself again: what is your story? I work with social media, where the format is called a “Story” for a reason. Everyone is telling one. What story are you telling?
The clearest path toward happiness begins by changing your story. Challenge it. Take it apart. Your story binds together what you believe about yourself, other people, relationships, and life. It becomes a single narrative, a melody you hear again and again. You don’t have to accept that melody without question.
Change your inner voice
Listen to your language. How do you speak to yourself? Do you say, “Life is hard,” “Life is beautiful,” “Life smiles on me,” or “Life is miserable”? Is the refrain “I always fail,” or “I always find my way”? Are you living inside a happy story, a romantic comedy, or a tragedy that drags on episode after episode?
Each of us writes a script. To rewrite it, we have to change the inner dialogue. I tell myself, “I can. I will succeed. Whatever happened, happened for my good.” I keep encouraging myself, as though a chorus in my heart were lifting me again and again.
Don’t postpone happiness
Many of us postpone happiness: until I finish my degree, lose weight, find the love of my life, or get a good job. But why? We have this moment. I can enjoy it even if I haven’t reached my destination.
I’m driven by goals, and I teach people to pursue theirs. I also remind them, and myself, to celebrate along the way. Life isn’t one finish line. It is one journey followed by another.
Keep your innocence, strengthen your faith
If you were hurt because you trusted with an open heart, don’t worry: this is certainly your salvation. It isn’t a fall; it is salvation. It takes strong faith to see that salvation. Many people are hurt when someone takes advantage of their innocence. Don’t stay naive about the crisis, but strengthen your faith.
Even if I have broken down and lost everything, I don’t know how long the next stage will take, but salvation and a miracle are on the way. I would rather remain innocent. Another definition of wisdom is patience.
Good things need time
Why can’t something good happen immediately? If it’s good, why not now? Because sometimes we have to travel a particular road before we can understand where it was leading us. Things take time. When we rush, we can spoil even something good.
Think about baking. Any chef will tell you that rushing the process can ruin the result. Or think of fruit on a tree: pick it too early and it may still be bitter because it hasn’t finished ripening. We are like that, too. Resist the pull of immediate gratification. Take the longer view, and celebrate as you go, even before you’ve reached the goal you hoped for.
You can change the way you think
People can spend a lifetime without realizing that change is possible. But we can change the way we think. Think of it as choosing a new playlist or seeing life through a different filter. Changing my thoughts makes my mind work for me. My feelings change, and then my whole reality changes, too.
Will every thought be positive? No. Will I ever have 100% certainty? No. But can I stop beating myself up? Yes. Even when life doesn’t unfold the way I want, so what? I can begin again as often as I need to.
You can come back from failure
We all fail, and we all make mistakes. The unwise response is despair. The wiser response is to return to the starting point: “I made a mistake. That didn’t work. I’ll try another way.”
The Hebrew idea of repentance, teshuvah, is also an idea of return: going back to the starting point and changing what needs to change. There is no reason to surrender to despair. If you never fall along the way, you cannot return. People who succeed in any field aren’t necessarily smarter or more capable. They keep going.
A familiar story about the invention of electricity tells of some 20,000 attempts. According to the story, if the inventor had given up after yet another failure, we wouldn’t have electricity today. The same is true of every invention. Whatever difficulty you meet, know that there is a solution. Everything depends on refusing to despair, acting, moving, and doing the work.
Choose words that give you strength
When someone says, “I have no strength,” they drain their strength in that moment. I want my words and thoughts to say, “I have strength, and I will succeed,” wherever I am on life’s winding road, whatever difficulty I’m facing, even if the way out of a dilemma seems impossible.
Don’t say, “I can’t.” Don’t get trapped in asking, “Why?” There is a Creator, and the Creator stands with you and says, “If I am with you, you can do anything. If I brought this difficulty to you, you can get through it.” So I set a rule for myself: the words “I have no strength” no longer belong in my vocabulary, spoken or unspoken.
The language we use within ourselves matters most because, in the end, everything is inside us; there is nothing outside. That assumes, of course, that we have done the work. Almost everyone says, “I have no strength,” at some point during the day. I fall into that habit, too. But when I hear myself say it, I answer immediately: “I have so much strength.” The words I use about myself affect me.
What faith means when nothing feels stable
At the time I recorded this episode, only three years had passed since COVID. People had stayed home, afraid of physical contact. Just eight months had passed since 1,400 people were murdered, yet it already felt like years. We were living through changes so rapid that nothing felt secure. We never know what tomorrow will bring. What we have is faith in the Creator.
In Jewish tradition, times like these are described as the birth pangs of the Messiah (chevlei Mashiach): a period of abrupt change and instability. The Creator is telling us that time has run out and we can no longer simply wait for the Messiah. The uncertainty grows, the world moves faster, and the only thing we can rely on is our faith, not anything physical.
We don’t know what will happen. We have to understand that these are not the times we once knew. Heaven has everything except a clock. That brings us back to our responsibility for the way we live.
The measure we use for others
Have you ever looked at two people and wondered why life seems to flow for one while nothing goes right for the other? One woman gets married, has children, an apartment, and a good income. Life seems to move smoothly. For another woman, everything feels dark. She pours her frustration onto everyone around her. Even if she marries, the explosions and arguments begin on the first day. She rents a home in a terrible area, can barely pay for it, keeps losing jobs, and moves from one workplace to the next.
Why does the Creator give one person an easy life and another a hard one? How is that decision made? The Gemara teaches that when a person lets go of grievances against others, their own transgressions are forgiven. In other words, we are judged by the standard we apply to others. The Baal Shem Tov explains it with the image of the Creator playing back a recording of how we judged someone else and then judging us by that recording.
Imagine you’re in a traffic jam and someone tries to push into your lane. You’ve already waited 15 minutes, you’re angry, and you refuse to let that person merge. That is a strict judgment. By the standards of heavenly justice, you may be completely right: it isn’t fair. But the next time you ask the Creator for something beyond the strict letter of the law, remember the standard you applied to someone else. The answer may be, “All right, but wait. Other people are ahead of you.”
This becomes painfully real in divorce. In my work, I meet many people who have gone through it, and I see how much anger and hurt they carry.
Forgiveness and what we carry inside
As difficult as it is, if you don’t forgive, there will be no forgiveness for you in Heaven. If you refuse to let something go, Heaven won’t overlook your own failings, either. We need to see this reality we’ve entered as a kind of game, with the Creator hidden beyond it. The Hebrew word ne’elam means “hidden” and is rooted in the idea of concealment.
We also have creative power through our thoughts, feelings, and actions. What happens within me takes shape in my outer life. I may appear patient while inwardly I am burning, judging, and criticizing. That is what I will receive in life: other people judging, criticizing, and diminishing me.
We rise after a fall when we refuse to let it become despair. We need to understand that there is no despair in the world at all. If you have fallen into despair, my heart is with you. All of us end up there sometimes. The important question is how long you remain there. The path to happiness has to begin within me. It cannot depend on something outside me.
So when you encounter a painful event or an insensitive person, or when you catch yourself judging or criticizing someone, pay attention. We are like magnets: the emotional state I carry within me echoes back again and again.
Speak the same language as your soul
I came across a lovely line that stayed with me, though I don’t remember where I found it: “I hope you find someone who speaks your language, so you don’t have to spend your life translating your soul.”
There is something deep in that.
A two-column exercise
I was speaking with a woman whose energy had begun to fade. Her drinking reflected that decline: she drank, felt bad about herself, judged herself, and became trapped in an endless loop. I said to her, “Let’s do something simple. We long for happiness when we feel something is missing, but every one of us has known happiness at some point.”
I asked her to take a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle. On one side, she wrote what life looked like when she felt happy: she got up at seven in the morning, meditated first thing, met with her coach once a week instead of once a month, and spent time with friends.
On the other side, she described her life now. She was waking late, letting projects slip, and suffering from headaches. She had also been referred for liver tests. The two columns made the difference visible. I told her, “This is a matter of choice. If you choose to return to the life you described in the first column, you can begin to recreate the conditions in which you felt happy.”
Here’s my practical suggestion for you. Divide a page in two. On one side, write down what your days looked like when you were happy: how you behaved, what you did, and how you spent your time. On the other, describe what happens when you’re unhappy. Look honestly at the difference, then choose wisely. It works.
Someone is watching over us
Take Nina, for example. We love Ninet and her song (in Hebrew). Remember that someone is watching over us. Carry that powerful promise in your heart with trust and faith: someone above is watching and listening. In the end, what does a person need? To know they aren’t alone.
You are not alone. Anything can happen. Everything is open. In the end, you leave; you don’t remain. But someone is always watching over you.
Have a good day.
Sources and external links
What faith is and how it shapes our lives
The power of words and thoughts
Taking responsibility for your happiness