Through most of my life, the correct answer to that question would be “Almost!”, disguised as something else, though. There was always something for me to accomplish in order to allow myself to be happy.

As I grew up, I started to realize I was not the only one who perceived “happiness” as something to be achieved. Living in THAT place, landing THAT job, a relationship with THAT person, buying THAT car or new iPhone (seriously?); these are all common obstacles to lots of people around the world in their way to happiness.

By now you can already assume this road leads to excruciating pain, right?!

One of the many facets of this trap is the misguided idea of happiness as a synonym to success. Success is undoubtedly something to be achieved, something we must work hard for.

The never-ending accomplishment rush we live in (calling it “rat race” makes it a little scarier, right?) has us thinking one can only be truly happy by covering all those steps that seem inherent to adult life.

From that perspective, the road to happiness feels a lot harder. You must push through all this pain and hard work and uncountable sleepless nights so you can finally, someday, see yourself as a happy fellow. Damn! Even writing that is painful. Why even bother?

The problem with this point of view is: How the hell are we supposed to go through all this stormy weather if we’re not happy in the first place?!

There’s a Brazilian song that says “happiness is a matter of being”. For some strange reason, I was never able to let that message sink in. Any time I listened to that song (or something similar) my mind would go “Yeah, man! Easy for you to say!”.

That was my relationship with happiness! Even so, I was not yet ready to give up! I was willing to do whatever I could to reach happiness. So I left my hometown and went to the other side of the world… Yeah, at some point I assumed geography was the main condition between me and a happy life. It’s a good thing this memory brings me some laughter now.

Since I’m on this great “Embrace the clichés” campaign, it took me little time to understand the fact that no matter where I lived, I would still be myself. Changing location is not a magic solution and there’s no map to Happyland.

And then I had to do the thing I fear the most, I had to look inside, within my soul. A mere glimpse wouldn’t be enough! I had to be as present as I could with my thoughts to find stuff about myself I REALLY loved. My challenge was to acknowledge, between everything I’ve done through my whole existence, the things I was proud of.

Somewhere along the way, I learned to disempower myself. I didn’t feel like I deserved all the good things that had happened to me; there’s was always a way to diminish my accomplishments… “I’m pretty sure I was a bad teacher!”, “I got lucky with the bar exam!”, “I didn’t deserve that job I kept for eight years before I decided to quit because it was making me miserable!”, you name it!! It didn’t matter all the biases that would enable me to ditch those thoughts. Deep inside I was married to those cruel words.

Our mind can be a tricky friend sometimes. It can go all-in to get us away from danger, but guess what?! Most of us are conditioned to mentally understand failure as a dangerous place to be (ask Carol Dweck about fixed mindset and growth mindset). From that perspective, the brain takes on the job of not letting you fail by not letting you even try, and that can be one of the reasons it comes with the whole “You’re a failure anyway. Why even try?” strategy. Although I said it’s a danger zone, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s also a pretty comfortable place.

Once you engage in this pattern, the loop will always feed itself to the point you’re paralyzed! You’re gonna hold on to every “sign” the universe gives you not to try anything. This self-beating routine will play in repeat until it completely extinguishes accountability from your life, while at the same time you’re still thinking about what the next step to happiness is.

You end up wishing to conquer something you don’t even allow yourself to try. How are we going to overcome failure if we don’t even expose ourselves to it in the first place?! Luckily, there’s a way out of this maze… And that is awareness!!

It was only when I accepted the challenge to be alone in my mind and take full ownership of my thoughts that things started to settle down a little. By facing the problem I was able to recognize what came from within and what I had let inside. I could know myself a little bit more and pat my back for the effort I had been putting into my life.

Step by step, being aware is helping me to identify the happiness within me, the fuel I need to go through no matter what kind of storm is yet to come. The tool that allows me to fully accept and embrace who I am, with all my flaws, but without losing sight of all my qualities and how I can bring value to those around me. Being aware enabled me to share this story with you guys, and God knows how much I’ve bee willing to do this!

If you are in this place right now, asking yourself which is the ultimate obstacle between you and the courage to do anything, take your time! Spend some time with yourself. Remove all that noise brought to you by your environment… Talk to yourself and let your inner beauty shine through this experience!

You can’t find a solution to a problem unless you commit to it!

There’s nothing between you and your happiness, it’s deep there inside you! Just let it be the engine to propel you toward your best life!

"I don't know what to do!"

Have you ever paid attention to how many times this is said as an excuse?

The thing is, most of the time, we do know what to do, we may even know how to do it, we're just afraid of crossing that line.

You see, it's been almost a year since I published my one and only Story on Medium. From that day on, all I wanted to do was to publish again and yet I kept myself from doing it, day after day.

Why do we do that to ourselves?

We have our dreams, some of them are practical enough, but we're constantly afraid of what lays beyond the first step. Everyone who has ever invested in some endeavor knows that you set in motion a whole world of achievement when you start taking action in some direction, whatever it may be.

We're so accustomed to the status quo that we fear even the benefits our achievements can bring to our environment. We are afraid of how we're going to deal with this new lifestyle, in which we do what we want, in which accountability rules, a life where there's not a good enough excuse to prevent us from doing what is needed!

When we ponder too much we are actually saying to ourselves "What if it works?! What if doing this (writing that article) sets in motion the changes that will take me where I want to go?! You know what? Better not! Let me get back at this later, when I'm ready, maybe." Damn, it doesn't make any sense!

The thing is you're ready right now! We all are!

I've come to the realization that, when our minds are filled with so many different voices, the one we should pay attention to is the first one, for it expresses our true desires, the destination we're looking for. We should act right away so there's no time for the other voices to bring the "doubt decoration" to the room. Those other voices are not about safety in its pure meaning, they're not about keeping it real, they're all about fear!

Safety, when imposed by fear, can do much more damage than every failure you can think of!

If you've decided to do something daring enough, there will certainly be some obstacles along the way (hate to break it to you), you just don't need your mind predicting it all even before you do the first try.

The very story of how this article came to life is a funny one.

About two months ago I moved to Melbourne, Australia with a friend. Since we got here, my friend, who has a business degree and use to work as a business administrator back home, started his YouTube Channel documenting his journey so far, and watching all that happen has been an amazing source of inspiration, the development of his filmmaking craft is something almost palpable.

One of these days we were talking and I asked him to give me his first YouTube Creator Award as soon as he gets the second one, and, after some reluctance, he said "I'll give you the Award, but only if you publish something on Medium by Sunday night, no further than that!"

So, this is it! For the beauty of sharing, for the thrill of starting, for the plan of keeping someone else's YouTube Award!

You know what needs to be done and you know how to do it! For that matter, I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes on the power of starting.

Start by doing what’s necessary, then do what’s possible and suddenly you are doing the impossible. — Francis of Assisi.

Last year, when I first got to know Medium, it was love at first sight! So many great pieces to read about so many different, interesting topics; a great, respectful community sharing love and insights..

It was heaven for me, so I decided right away I wanted to be part of it!

And that’s where I got stuck!

You see, as a growing kid, I did a hell of a great job learning how to be a people pleaser!

Since my first years at school, I was all the time hearing teachers say “what a smart boy!”, “you’re designed to be big” and all that kind of crap, which was a great antidote to having a very critical father.

The result? I got addicted to it! I had finally found my source of approval!

So, my childish mind decided to take it to another level!

The thing got to a point where being a good student just wasn’t enough. I had to be a good person, NO MISTAKES, or people would stop praising me. I felt compelled to attend to any request thrown in my direction even if I genuinely didn’t want to.

My wants and needs just weren’t that important as long as I got the recognition I’d been desperately searching!

Good boy, here’s your cookie!!

As anyone can figure out, that pattern emulated over the years caused me great damage. In conversations, I would agree with anything said by anyone, even knowing my heart was totally against it.

I didn’t get myself the chance to make mistakes, to be wrong, to fail! Actually, even tiny mistakes would cost a helluva lot! Friendship, family, even love, for God’s sake!!

Damn, it would cost my sense of self-worth! My soul got eclipsed, but not for so long!

It took me a lot of hard work to realize all that!

So, I decided to speak up! To share my truth with others and get fully connected to my voice and, maybe, who knows, help others who might be experiencing something like that. Medium was the way to go!

But there was fear again. “what if no one likes it?”, “what if I’m not good enough?” (that’s a classic one isn’t it?), “what if my non-native English writing pushes all the readers away?”

You know what?! NOT ANYMORE!!

Paraphrasing the great Mark Twain: courage is not the absence of fear, it is deciding that fear isn’t enough to stop you from doing what you want!

So here I am, decided! Taking the leap, hitting “Publish”.

I don’t need any cookie, just share your experience on the comments below!