Category: happiness

Your Happiness Scale

You often hear people say, “Don’t let it steal your happiness/joy.”

They’re often referring to some trivial, in their eyes, circumstance that you’re allowing to bring down your mood and ruin your day.

There’s a chance they’re right. You’re overreacting and should release it and reclaim your happiness. They might also be wrong. You get decide what upsets you and what doesn’t.

The trouble is you’re not always sure you should be upset. Sometimes you don’t even want to be, but you are.

Here’s a simple mental exercise you can do to determine if it’s worth the emotional investment it takes to be upset and upend your happiness.

Visualize a scale like the one shown above. on one side of the scale, see the word happiness or joy, if you prefer. On the other side, see the circumstances that have you upset. Focus for a moment. See your scale clearly.

Now, ask yourself one simple question. Which is more important to me right now – my happiness/joy or allowing myself to be angry and upset?

Answer the question honestly. Then recognize that it is 100 percent your choice which to choose.

Make no mistake. Happiness is a choice. Remaining upset or angry is a choice. Neither option is forced upon you. You maintain compete autonomy to decide which will rule your mind right now and this day, week, year, or lifetime.

Sometimes a little anger can be short-term fuel for positive change, but it’s not a fuel to run a life by. It’s too toxic and corrosive.

Happiness and joy are ever-present, right here whenever you need them. You haven’t been cheated. They’re as accessible to you right now as they are to any other person on the planet. They are accessed by a choice and a quiet determination not to succumb to the negative.

You do you, but do the you that bear serves you,

Wherever you are on your journey, know I believe in you!

Ray

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10 Ways to Choose Happiness

Good evening, my friends. There was a fantastic book released back in the early 1990s titled Happiness Is A Choice by Barry Neil Kaufmann.

Since reading that book, it’s always stuck in my mind that this is a fundamental truth of life.

Some angrily rail against this idea, claiming that it’s a form blaming the victim. That’s only true if you plan to remain forever a victim in your life.

The idea that we can choose the feeling or the attitude is an absolute freedom we have over our circumstances.

In his seminal work, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” Viktor Frankl wrote:

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Being a Holocaust survivor, Frankl realized the power to choose your attitude despite life’s harshest and most unjust experiences.

Neither he nor I deny that we are sometimes victimized by life’s vicissitudes. Rather that is was one of our true superpowers that we need not cede our right to be happy the circumstances around us.

Here are 10 ways to choose happiness every day.

  1. Allow fewer people and fewer things to piss you off.
  2. Know that negative situations are temporary and good times are on the way back.
  3. Find joy in the little things.
  4. Feel good about the success of others between your successes.
  5. Have complete confidence that everything, everything that happens to you is a doorway to something great.
  6. Remember who you really, truly are beyond the masks and the roles of this momentary situation.
  7. Remember who other people really, truly are beyond the masks and roles of this momentary situation.
  8. Put tough days behind you and start with the premise that today will be amazing.
  9. Notice the million miracles happening all around you in every moment.
  10. Know for certain, wherever life has taken you, it’s never too late to turn it all around and be the person you came here to be.

Live by these principles and I guarantee you, you’ll be able to choose happiness over and over again.

Wherever you are on your journey, remember you are awesome!

Ray

Are You Contractually Unhappy?

We’re all familiar and somewhat annoyed with the fine print – the terms and conditions- that accompany virtually every transaction we participate in.

Let me ask you this. Do you place a long list of terms and conditions on your happiness? Do you catch yourself saying, “I’ll be happy when…” or “If this, this, and this happen, then I’ll be happy”?

If you want more happiness, drop your terms and conditions on it. Make the radical choice to be happy right now, today no matter what.

The alternative is to spend your life pushing your happiness out another day, another week, another year waiting for all your fine print to be satisfied.

Just in case no one else has reminded you today, you are awesome!

Ray

Radical Choice to Be Happy

The world will be what it will be today. We can either choose to own our own happiness, regardless of what comes. Or, we can leave our happiness up to the whims of events. The choice is always ours.

Just in case no one else has reminded you today, you ARE awesome!

Ray

Make the Radical Choice to Be Happy No Matter What

Make the radical choice to be happy no matter what.

Happiness is right here right now always, if we choose it. I promise! You can overcome your situational happiness and trade it for persistent happiness.

You and I place too many terms and conditions on our happiness. We say:

  • I’ll be happy if…
  • I’ll be happy when…

Yet we achieve those conditions and they may bring momentary happiness. Then we’re right back into dissatisfaction.

It’s not surprising. Our mainstream culture is a skilled merchant in unhappiness, fear, and dystopia. They sell it in bulk on the regular. We are easily swept into these eddies of dissatisfaction. If we’re not careful, they become our home.

I’m preaching at me as much as you this morning. I do it too. I place small print terms and conditions on my happiness. I waste days waiting and working for my conditions to materialize.

Buddha said, “The worst things in the world are desiring something and getting it.” I believe he was talking about this very cycle. We’re stuck in desiring rather than enjoying life. Then we get what we want and it loses its charms and appeal.

It IS a radical choice to be happy no matter what in such an environment. So, how do we achieve it?

Powerhack:

  1. Choose happiness over and over moment after moment. There’s no shortcut. Every moment presents us with a choice to be happy or be stuck in wanting and waiting.
  2. Be here now. This was the famous advice of Ram Dass. Most of our unhappiness, if you pay attention, exists in the past and the projected future. This moment is wonderful, if you choose to see it.
  3. Spend more time with roses and jasmine. This was the solution proposed by Rumi to his poetic question, “When you go to a garden do you look at thorns or flowers?” See the positive around you now.
  4. Be still and know. God or the universe, however you term it, has your back. Good things are coming. Be happy about them before they even arrive.
  5. Drop your terms and conditions and just be happy.

You are all awesome! Thanks for reading today’s post.

Ray