The most basic access to happiness is to realize that it is a choice. Always.

We hear and have the experience that happiness is a result of good things happening around, or to us.

i.e. She/he makes me happy. Being around my friends makes me happy. Dancing makes me happy. and so on.

If we are to correctly rephrase the above statements, it would sound like – I have trained myself that when She/he is around or in my thoughts, that I create the response of happiness. I have invented that being around the group of people that I define as my friends allows me to create the feelings of happiness. I have gathered evidence over my life that when I dance, more times than not, I create the experience of happiness.

Obviously, it is cumbersome to speak this way. But the pitfall here is that we shortcut the statement and soon forget that we ever made this stuff up. We start to believe that the circumstance is what causes the outcome.

The ultimate outcome of this train of events, is that we not only come to believe that the circumstance is our access to happiness, but that we can only experience happiness under a certain limited set of circumstances.

We are the ones who invented the connection between happiness and the particular event. The good news, is that we can invent that ANYTHING is our access to happiness. (in the same way that we can invent that unhappiness is not a result of circumstances either.

Action:

Pay attention this next week to every time you are happy. Notice the events. Then say “I choose that this type of event makes me happy”.

After you become more aware of the events, you can begin to notice any event and say the same thing.

Practice and repetition are the keys here.

We will take things up a notch in my next post.

Be happy,

Dale