Tag Archives: choose to be happy

22

The Simple Choice You Can Make

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What is your Choice?

Each person makes a simple choice in their lives, ultimately defining the tenor and tone of their life and all the experiences in it. No person is exempt from this decision, and we make it daily in all we do. It is impossible to fake our decision because it is written in big, bold letters on our soul’s billboard. You can try to fool the outside world and pretend for a time about your thoughts, but eventually, the truth of your choice will be revealed to yourself, and of course, to the world. It is such a pervasive choice; you can see the answer in every person you meet and in each interaction you experience throughout your life. Are you ready to think about your choice? The decision is basic and straightforward. Do you choose to be happy? Or do you choose to be unhappy?

Seems Too Simple

I thought this was too simple a choice when I first was exposed to this thought. There are many more powerful decisions than this, but look at each person you know or have ever known, and their lives are a direct display of their answer.

Your happiness is a light to others, and your unhappiness is a pervasive wet blanket of doom.

About personal happiness. I have known people in challenging situations who have found it in their constitution to find a happy thought, even behind the pain. I have also known people who have very fortunate circumstances and manage to find unhappiness in every blessing in life. This is nothing more than a personal choice.

Where do you fit in your pursuit of happiness? Do you look for the positive? It is always there behind the darkness we face. Sometimes the dark seems so pervasive and complete that we also want to allow it to define us. The death of a loved one, the end of a relationship. Or any other thing we can define as unfavorable consumes us and become a part of our story. But it doesn’t have to be, and we determine the value of these things to us. Nobody will be happy about all the suffering in life, but you can suffer, learn lessons, and not let negativity define your life. That is the choice of being happy in life.

Look Around You

If you doubt this simple choice is before everyone in the world, look at all the people you encounter in your path. Not only will you see this choice in people’s actions, but you can also feel it. Most people make a clear essential choice on a subconscious level to live a happy life or not live a happy life. Fear is the factor robbing people of happiness in life. Fear of losing something, not getting something, of the suffering of all kinds, of the past, and course of the future. Fear is toxic to your happiness, and it is virtually impossible to be afraid and happy simultaneously.

You have this choice continually in your life. You can be unhappy with your job, family, current situation, or anything else in your experience. Spend your time worrying about a million things that probably will never happen, and if they did happen, most often, it isn’t the problematic tragedy built up in your mind. You can spend that time being grateful for what you have and enjoying the things that are good and a part of your life. A good joke at work, a kindness showed, something comfortable you have in life right now. The person deciding whether you are happy in your life or not is always going to be you. Could you take responsibility for it?

Not Blind Faith

I can hear the people’s thoughts determined to be unhappy right now. Not everything is going to make you happy. That is true; how can you be pleased about losing something you love? You can’t but how you deal with that loss is your choice. You can let it destroy you and change you into a life of continual unhappiness. When you are suffering, it is hard to maintain a cheerful countenance, which will always be the truth. However, there is always something in your life, a person, hopefully, who can bring out the best in you.

If you don’t want to consider this choice, then you have made your choice already, and the results of your life experience will reflect it. I encourage you to look at your option and take responsibility for how your life unfolds for you today and every day. I choose to have a positive thought process because choosing otherwise is counterproductive and seems like a choice for continual unhappiness. Some people may find wallowing in anger, sadness, jealousy, envy, selfishness, etc. I will choose love, kindness, joy, giving, gratitude, peace, and acceptance.

This is the choice you have been making your entire life; imagine what the world would be like if everyone chose to be happy in their lives. 

“If you want to be happy, be.”-  Leo Tolstoy

“If you aren’t grateful for what you already have, what makes you think you would be happy with more.”- Roy T. Bennett.

“You can only have bliss if you don’t chase it.”-  Henepola Gunaratana

“For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”-   Ralph Waldo Emerson

“We don’t laugh because we’re happy – we’re happy because we laugh.”-   William James

22

The Positive Turn

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If you are wondering what your thoughts and emotions have led you to in life, take a moment and look at your life and honestly evaluate your circumstances. Nothing will provide a clearer picture. The events of your life are a living, breathing display of how you think and what you believe about yourself.  We make choices every day about what exactly we “deserve” to experience every day, and the accumulative effect of these choices is our reality.  So if you are working a job you are not wild about, that is a result of your preferences. Nobody else forced you into it. You chose it for some reason. The status of your relationships in all areas of your life results from the decisions you have made based on your beliefs about life and reality. That is a fact, and if you want to change things, you need to look at the ideas that led to your thoughts and discard the ones that are leading you in a negative direction. Here are a few thoughts to move in a positive direction. There is success in everyone. The potential for joy in every day and all of it is really up to us.

Take Responsibility

The first and only place to look in answer to: “Why am I in this situation?” or “How did this happen?” is to look in the mirror and accept your responsibility for all of your life situations.  You can cry and complain about this happening or wallow over the sadness that somebody else hurt you. That is a fact; people will hurt others, be callous, uncaring, and take advantage of others.  It happens to everyone in life, but you are responsible for your reaction to everything. You are responsible.

It is easy to slip into the role of a victim and feel sorry for yourself and think about how you couldn’t help what happened because someone else made the choices. That is a very slippery slope, and it slips in more areas once you allow responsibility to fall to something or someone else. The best choice we can make is to take complete responsibility for our lives and situations, and that gives us all the power to create whatever future we want.  You are responsible for your past and your future.

Grow and Take Action

You have the opportunity in every moment of every day to seize that experience and make it something powerful and productive. Too often, I have seen myself and others sit comfortably in the virtual recliner of routine behavior. If you dream of doing something, set your intention to create it, and then take at least a small action toward developing it. In action, there is a truth. It will tell you what will work and what you need to do differently, but it will always lead you toward your reality and the accomplishment of your goals and dreams.

Action will help you gain more wisdom regarding what you want, what will make you happy, and what might not. Learning is gaining knowledge and can come to you from books, videos, classes, other people, time spent in nature, or many different sources.  Nothing will lead you to wisdom if you don’t seek it, and nothing can stop you from finding it if you look for it. So make an effort to find the knowledge available to you every day, and then look for ways you can share what you have learned with the rest of the world. To receive is essential, but to give is the legacy of your life. Make it a positive one.

Choose a Happy Destiny

It doesn’t matter to me if you believe in destiny or not; you have an opportunity in your short life to create something magnificently fabulous or something tragically awful, or something anywhere in between. It is up to you to look at your heart and see what gifts you have to fine-tune and share with the world. Your destiny will be assured once you have listened to that voice within. We are all born with something to give, and then life covers it up through programming and expectations.  The journey to find it is up to you.

Often, the simple thought and feeling of genuine gratitude will guide you back to your true self. Be grateful for what you have in life, and more will come your way. That is what seems always to happen. Have a thankful spirit, and that choice will bring happiness into your life. Grateful people are still happy, and that choice can be yours now. No matter what your situation is right now, there is something to be thankful for, and through gratitude, a small glimmer of joy will enter your life whether you want it to or not. Look for it, create it, and move more positive feelings into your life.

Forgive

Another absolute power we all have is brought to us through forgiveness. It doesn’t mean you condone any poor behavior, and it doesn’t mean you are OK with bad things happening to you, but it means you are no longer letting something that happened in the past define you today.  Refer back to responsibility. You are the only one that can choose to forgive someone and all they do or don’t do. Holding on to anger, hate, fear, or whatever negative emotion you perceive from an event will harm you. These are released through forgiveness. Decide to give heartfelt and honest forgiveness to all those in your life.

The most important person you can forgive is yourself. Deep down, we hold anger toward ourselves for all things that occur in our lives.  Some see taking responsibility for their life this way.  Looking at the past is an impossible game because you can’t change anything that happened, and if you could have done better or behaved differently, you certainly would have.  So to use your past as a punishment for your experiences today is our choice.  And it can be released by only looking into our hearts and forgiving the people who hurt us and, most importantly ourselves. A forgiving spirit will guide you to greatness and a life without fear.

Persist Always

Finally, it is vital to develop and maintain a practice of persistence in your life. Some will start many things and have a high energy level initially but will lose their momentum at the first challenge they face and move on to something else. Persist without exception.  Nothing ever takes the place of persistence. It is a trait that will lead to success in all areas of life. Keep on trying. Get knocked down eight times, get up nine, and trim will be able to stop you.  It is a great faith in yourself that will allow you to be persistent in your pursuit of a career, health, a relationship, or anything else you are shooting for. Keep on trying, and don’t give up because it gets difficult or you have an initial setback. Those challenges are sometimes needed to teach you the information you need. Persistence is power and will always lead you in a positive direction.

“The truth I know for sure is that if something feels good and makes you happy on the inside, you’re probably moving in the right direction.”- Jacqui Holland

“Surround yourself with people who talk about ideas and visions of positivity and do not waste time talking about other people.” 

 

21

The Unknown

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face the unknown
Be grateful for What is Currently Unknown.

All of us have a deep desire to know what will happen next.  Where are we going? What is the next step? What should I do now?

Sometimes it seems like it would be much easier if our lives were scripted in a book that we could read beforehand.  Follow the script, and you will eventually come to your happy ending, and everything will be alright for all situations.  That is just not the way that life works, and I, for one, am understanding of it and most grateful for it.  Face the new experiences of life and bravely embrace the unknown. You don’t have any other choice, and you have made your choices, which have put you where you are. Be responsible and own your situation, regardless of the fear and the unknown.

Don’t Fear What You Don’t Know.

I have found the unknown to be very undesirable on a few occasions. First, when things are going just wonderfully.  When you look around and think, “Wow, I overcome your fear of the unknownam so happy right now.”

This attitude is a problem because if I feel on top of the world, I have the built-in fear that there is no place to go but down.  Since that is the case, I tried not to get too happy for many years because it could be taken away.  I never realized that happiness is not extrinsic from myself; it is inside.  I have had experiences that were fun, happy, wonderful, and I never wanted them to end.  I also have experienced scary, uncomfortable, painful, and sad things.  In the past, I thought that my happiness couldn’t exist in the presence of something terrible.  I found that my joy depends not on what happens to me but on how I look at the world from the inside.  We are not in control of many things outside of ourselves, but we are in total control over how we handle them.

I know many people who have everything they should need in the world.  A healthy relationship, money, family, you name it.  Yet they choose to be unhappy, which I can’t understand.  I also know people who seem to have very little but are extremely happy.  It takes me to a quote I heard, warning you to be careful when you find something that makes you happy because it can be taken away from you.   Happiness comes from within you.  So if you accept whatever happens as the experience that it is, sad things make you feel sadness for a time, but your happiness is not at the whim of fate.  It appears or strays according to your own choices.

Let go of your fear of the unkownLet Go

People do all sorts of things to make it seem like they control life.  We create strict schedules for our days and manipulate people and events to control outcomes.  These things never seem to work out in the end as we would like.

Often, the things we do to control life shield us from new and exciting experiences, and when it comes to business manipulating others leads to a poor working environment. Letting go of the need to control everything and understanding that it is impossible to do anyway is a step in a positive direction. You are just one person in the world with your thoughts, insights, and needs. Let others have theirs. You can only control your reaction to events as they unfold.

Make your plans to the best of your ability and allow things to unfold. The people you are with may surprise you with much more than you ever thought possible. Or perhaps with much less than you would hope. But either way, there is a lesson in it for you.

Not Knowing Lets You Grow

Being grateful for the things you don’t know is intelligent because it allows you to experience something beyond your scope of reality.   Most people would never stretch themselves beyond what they already know if they didn’t have to.

It is very comfortable to sit in your life, where you seem to know everything you need to be safe and feel in control.  Yet, there is the world out there that may require you to stretch outside of that comfort zone to contribute what you are meant to give to its well-being.  The Unknown Provides this.  Once a new experience comes to you, you have to experience growth to deal with it regardless of its nature.  If you stop growing, you will be moving in the other direction.  Nobody stays the same.

I choose to accept the unknown of each day as a part of life that was sent to teach me what I need to know to grow.   So today, I am grateful for the things I don’t know and hope I dare to deal with them as the experience of life unfolds.

Don’t let fear run your life. Be the captain of your destiny. 

“The unknown always passes for the marvelous.” Anonymous

“Replace the fear of the unknown with curiosity.” Anonymous

“Sometimes, you find yourself in the middle of nowhere, and sometimes in the middle of nowhere, you find yourself.” Anonymous

“Going into the unknown is how you expand what is known.” Julien Smith

“We do not fear the unknown. We fear what we project onto the unknown.” Teal Swan

“A hero is somebody who voluntarily walks into the unknown.” Tom Hanks

“Awaken your mind to the unknown.” ATGW

 

21

You Deserve It

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you deserve to be happyDo you deserve happiness? This thought is a question most of us ask either on the conscious or subconscious level, and the honest answer we give too often is NO.  This limiting belief comes with us through the experiences that have taught us to expect less than the best. There is no reason to look at yourself and believe that you don’t deserve happiness. The only thing stopping you from living a happy life is own negative stories that you tell yourself in your mind. You always have the choice to look at yourself with softer eyes and admit that you deserve to be happy.

Your Mind is the Key on How to Feel Happy in Life

Your mind is a beautiful tool, but sometimes the wiring is off, and we 0b13574e717dd8cedbe9d364b21885a6listen to everything it tells us. Your ego has the job of making sense of the world and finding out why you are where you are.  Your ego evaluates all of your actions and most often uses negative stories to do so. These stories in your mind are the negative limiting beliefs we carry throughout life until we consciously choose to change them. Most of them come to light to keep you safe.  Your ego remembers that you tried and failed, loved once, and were hurt or trusted and disappointed.  That is where the negative stories come from, fear.

If your stories are telling you in any way you don’t deserve to be happy because of an action in the past or an event that happened to you, you have two choices, believe it and allow the limitations of that thought to destroy any happiness you have. Or you can choose to realize that you deserve to be happy, no matter what has happened in the past.

Keep in mind that no matter who you are and what you are going through, you are doing the best you can with what you have to work with at the time. That is a simple truth. You may not like the results of the situation, but learn from it, develop and grow and see what happens in the future. Your positive feelings will guide you on the path to feeling happy in life. 

Everyone Can Feel Happy in Life

Happiness truly comes from within oneself. If you need an outside stimulus to how to be happy in lifebring happiness, it will be challenging to find constant joy in your life. Every day you are given a group of opportunities to experience. Whether they make you happy or not is a choice. You decide your attitude toward them and how it makes you feel.

“A great attitude becomes a great mood, which becomes a great day, which becomes a great year, which becomes a great life. “~ Zig Zigler

If you are looking for a stimulus to bring you happiness, your moments will be short-lived and sporadic. When that thing that supplies satisfaction, material possessions, money, drugs, sex, or anything else is removed, where are you?

You deserve to be happy as often as you decide you should be because you are a  unique person, the only one that has ever existed. Each of us has an originality that allows us to contribute our special gift to the world.

Each person is the only one who can decide whether they are happy or not. Nobody else can do this. You deserve it as much as anyone. Make the choice today to feel satisfied in life.

“If you want happiness for an hour — take a nap.’
If you want happiness for a day — go fishing.
If you want happiness for a year — inherit a fortune.
If you want happiness for a lifetime — help someone else.”—-Chinese Proverb

“It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.”—–Dale Carnegie

“Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.”——-Winnie the Pooh

 

21

The Arrival of Happiness

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Happiness withinHappiness does not come due to what we experience on the outside of us, it comes from within, and it is up to us to decide whether we are happy with our relationships, jobs, or lives or not. There are many reasons I believe this to be true, but here are a few of my favorite thoughts on happiness.

So Often We Rely on Things

For much of my life, I was a person who thought that it took things to make me happy.  A relationship, a house, a new car, or new clothes would make me feel like I was happy.

tumblr_lxrc7kkCNo1qcwoauo1_500Yet, like many people, deep down, I was not happy.  How can this be?  I dreamed of getting something and following a plan and got it all, yet I was not happy inside.   This feeling of unhappiness made me research how others look at happiness and what this crazy game of life should be about.  This is what I learned. If you found something or someone you rely on for happiness, then I feel sorry for you because if that person or thing is taken away, so is your happiness.  And worse you have no control over this, you are a prisoner of your situation.

Things Do Not Make You Happy

No matter how many things I accumulated, any happiness was short-lived and didn’t last.  Two things resulted, I wanted more stuff to get happy about, and I worried that I would lose my stuff, and of course, then I would never be happy.

Finally, I started reading about how happiness comes from within, and it is based on your thoughts, emotions, and perspective on life.   Regardless of your experiences, you always have the ability to choose to be happy about life.

Find What You Love, Love What You Find

The more people I meet, the more obvious it is that everyone is born with some skill or talent.  Many forget it as they grow up and have expectations put on them, and are happiness-quotes-1conditioned to think and feel as society tells them.

Think back to when you were young and the dreams you had. You may have dreamed of being an astronaut or a cowboy or whatever, I don’t think the dream is important, but the person who dreamed was. Remember them and how they thought before a world of expectations and conditioning turned them into what we are today.

I think that what you love will come to you.  It doesn’t really matter what book you read or a philosopher you follow, and all agree that finding what you love to do is important.  Once you find that, do it and don’t worry too much about the money, it will follow your passion.

Choose to Be Happy

If you look at some aspect of your life and aren’t happy about it, change that thing.  I know it sounds simplistic, but isn’t looking outside of yourself for an answer unnecessarily complicated? You look in the mirror and see what is there. You then choose what you think of that reflection.   Choose to look at that person with love and understanding, and you will find your happiness in other areas will go up as well.

Today I am grateful that happiness comes from within, and I hope that if you are unhappy with an aspect of your life, you will decide to change it.

  It’s a GREAT day to be ALIVE.