Many people victimize themselves by seeing life as one experience to be judged as a whole, which can be either good or bad. If such a person has had a series of bad experiences, he views his life as bad.

            But life is not a single experience. Life is always changing, and every day of your life - every moment of every day - represents something totally new, which has never existed before, and which can be used in uncountable new ways if you decide to view it that way. Single-experience exponents are seldom happy, because consciously or unconsciously, they are constantly reviewing and judging their lives, which already sets them against reality and wastes their present moments. They typically think some other people are lucky enough to have happy lives, while they themselves have inherited unhappy lives. They get stuck because they believe they have no control over their own destinies.

            But the continuing-experience exponents are in a different ballgame. They view life as ever changeable, and therefore as something over which they can exercise a great deal of control. They tend to look for new ways of living, instead of hanging on to old ways. Change doesn't frighten them. In fact, they welcome it with open arms.

            "Success is a journey, not a destination". Up till this day, many of us have viewed life as a series of destinations or events. Graduations, diplomas, degrees, marriage, childbirth, promotions and other similar events were all destinations, and many are going from stop to stop, rather than through a journey. For myself, I let these words sink into my very soul and I learnt a very valuable lesson: Don't evaluate your life in terms of achievements, trivial or monumental, along the way. If you do, you will be destined to the frustration of always seeking out other destinations, and never allowing yourself actually to be fulfilled. Whatever you achieve, you will immediately have to plan your next achievement, so that you will have a new gauge of how successful and happy you are.

            Instead, wake up and appreciate everything you encounter along your path. Enjoy the flowers that are there for your pleasure. Tune in to the sunrise, the little children, the laughter, the rain and the birds. Drink it all in, rather than waiting to get to some always future point where it will be all right for you to relax. Indeed, success - even life itself - is nothing more than moments to enjoy, one at a time. When you understand this principle, you will reduce your victim stance immeasurably. You'll stop evaluating your happiness on the basis of achievements, and instead look upon the whole trip of life as something to be happy about. Or to sum it up, there is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.