I like the title Dare to Be Happy because, most of the time, it takes courage to initiate changes that will make me happy. Sometimes I know what I want to do, but I get afraid. Before I broke up with my last girlfriend, I had never learned how difficult it can be to do the right thing. What do I mean by “the right thing.”? The right thing is whatever I know in my heart to be in line with my greatest self and greatest desires. I was in that relationship to experience all the lessons that it taught me. Then, there came a time when I felt strongly compelled to move on. At one point, I knew it was time to break up. I knew it needed to happen, so I told her. I felt liberated at first, but then fear worked its way in. The mind-altering drug of fear threw me for a loop I had never experienced before. I doubted everything and felt like the world had been turned upside down.

My thought going into the break-up was that if I am doing the right thing, the change will be easy. This is most definitely not always true. I had put much work into making that relationship what it was (which was not very healthy), and there was much work that needed to be done to withdraw. This experience taught me a valuable personal lesson though. “Scary” does not imply “take no action”. There is a difference between being scared and intuition telling me not to do something. Fear throws made-up scenarios at me to scare me off. Intuition is a gentle knowing that something should be avoided. Fear seems to make my heart hurt, while intuition seems to operate in my solar plexus. Fear is unreasonable, intuition uses reason. I had all the intuition I needed to get out of that relationship, yet I let fear delude me into keeping it going. I finally listened to my intuition to get out, but fear was sure to have its say.

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