My favorite food is the burrito. To me it’s a food group. I wrap all kinds of things in my tortillas, and it’s not limited to beans and cheese.

When I lived in Hawaii, there was this great little customizable burrito place. They could make any kind you wanted. One evening, after a long days work, I stopped by to have one made.

Dropping it off at my table, I happily made my way over to the salsa bar. Upon returning, my heart just sank. Someone had stolen my burrito.

Who could do such a thing, and why did I have to sit outside? Inside the burrito could be safe and secure awaiting my return.

Feeling defeated, I decided it was no use. It just wasn’t meant to be.

Driving home by the theater, I noticed that the Lord of the Ring movie was still playing. Oh, if I just had a giant magical ring, I could have put it on my burrito and made it invisible from the notorious burrito thieves of Mordor.

Alas, that night I was deprived of the true happiness that comes from having your own Customized Invisible Burrito (CIB).

What is a Customized Invisible Burrito?

Let’s look at how Happiness is a Customized Invisible Burrito.

1. The Burrito: Happiness is like a burrito in that it’s a self-contained unit. The burrito of happiness is a combination of joy, mixed with good feelings, and wrapped in a tortilla of contentment. Like happiness, it is a portable meal unto itself.

2. The Customization: Burritos can be customized, and each person decides what goes into their burrito. The components of what makes you happy must be determined on your own. What makes me happy will not make others the same. We must decide what goes into our burrito, and then build it the way we want.

3. The Invisibility: The problem with good things is they can be stolen. This is why the burrito of happiness is invisible. It is built on the inside. It is something we carry within. We must not build our happiness on outside circumstance. It must not depend on other people, places or things. Because what can be seen, can be stolen.

How do we build a CIB?

1. Make up our mind that we are hungry

I know this sounds counter-intuitive, because hunger is usually not seen as a decision. However, sometimes we need to make up our minds that we are hungry and really want happiness.

Sometimes to have it, we must want it

2. Decide what we are hungry for

To build your happiness burrito, you need to decide what goes in it. There is a saying, “that if you aim at nothing you will hit it every time.”

For some, the hardest thing seems to be deciding on what they really want in life. Yet to build something that lasts, we must know what we want and have a plan to get it.

To find happiness we need to make up our minds as to what we really want. One way is to make as long a list as necessary, and begin to consolidate things into pertinent topics or subgroups.

One might use groups like mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual to categorize what brings us happiness.

One might be more dogmatic and use specific areas like family, friends, marriage, work etc.

One could even break things down on a time basis like morning, afternoon, evening and night.

The important thing is to discover what makes us happy. This way we can take specific actions in each area.

Step 3: Just do it

Every journey starts with one step. Sitting on your butt at home won’t get you there. Nothing like the present to start acting on the plans and ideas we made in step 2.

The key thing in being happy is learning how to find contentment in any circumstance. However contentment is not the same as being satisfied. Sometimes dis-satisfaction is just the motivation we need to make the appropriate actions.