On a daily basis many of us are heavily invested in the content of external stimuli. We are social beings and we look for validation in the views of others. An unfortunate interaction with a friend, a colleague or even a total stranger can ruin our day and cause us to become consumed with resentment and hatred. Nobody wants it to be this way — it’s just the reality of human interaction and emotions.
The Buddha pointed out to us that we don’t have to live totally dependent upon external validation. There is a way to invest instead on our own internal compass. The reason it works to have our own compass is because there are so many varied, inconsistent and half-baked views out there, it’s impossible to satisfy them all at once, let alone fulfill even one person’s unreasonable expectations. However, if we devote time to an internally derived compass, the consistency and completeness of your plan are dependent on how much you’ve invested in your spiritual development.
Instead of putting our energy into worrying whether we’ve lived up to society’s expectations, it is much more productive to develop our own understanding of what success in life looks like. Those who take the time to explore this often realize that true success and happiness is much more accessible than they realized. That’s because, contentment is already available to us in this present moment.
The way to access it is to train the mind to observe with mindfulness rather than to worry about what happened yesterday or what might happen tomorrow. This kind of training is called insight meditation. It consists of meditation exercises designed to direct our attention to the observation of mental and physical reality. This repeated observation of reality invariably leads to confidence in the way things are. The more confidence you have in present moment awareness, the less you need to worry about external factors and happiness will arise more regularly.