Will you Really have a Happy New Year or just talk about it?
I’ve always believed, “Life’s too short to be unhappy.” From a very young age, I can remember creating the plan for my ideal life. When I saw my parents working week after week for long hours and dreading Mondays, I knew that when I grew up I’d make sure to have a job I loved. When I’d witnessed countless people, myself included, entering into marriages because they believed maybe this is good as it gets, eventually I would forge on saying, “If you don’t try Misty , you’ll never know.” The bottom line is that pretty good, fine and okay, have never been adjectives that I wanted to describe my life.
I realized only after attaining most everything on my “Perfect Life List”, that the many hours spent affirming and vision boarding my brains out had somehow not created what I thought they would. Sooner than later the joy that accompanied any success I achieved would eventually fade and I would find myself answering a friendly “How are you? With pretty good, fine or okay. I lived where I wanted to live, I loved who I wanted to love, had more money in the bank than I’d ever had, but still my life felt just …okay and that...was totally... NOT okay! What I really wanted, and falsely believed those achievements would bring me, was the ever elusive goal behind my goals… the lasting feeling of happiness.
One day, after the sale of my home, I sat in my new house by the ocean, stressing about how to best manage my money. I didn’t want to lose it and be seen as one of those irresponsible “dummies” I’d heard about in social circles and on TV. Then suddenly it hit me how crazy I was. I had spent most of my life afraid I’d never get enough money to take time off and live in an amazing location, and here I was, living my dream, afraid I would lose it? It was crazy! The worry didn’t go away, it had just traded circumstances.
After that, I finally got what all the books and seminars had been talking about when they said, “Happiness is a choice.” As long as I allowed conditioned thought patterns to focus my attention on things that didn’t make me happy, like imaging myself homeless after squandering all my money for example, I would never be happy! So right then and there, my inner world became the priority of my life. I would never be able to control everything that was happening “out there” but I could certainly control what thoughts I let run my life. For a control freak and happiness seeker like me, this was great news!
So, for the last couple of years I’ve devoted my life to cutting out the middle man so to speak. I’ve chosen to bypass the endless pursuit of achievements and material “filler” and go straight for the good stuff…the feelings! It’s been a challenging road, as those of you who are on it will attest, but for any self respecting idealist, it’s the only way to fly. Choosing to be happy isn’t as easy as you might think. It means when your boyfriend triggers an old reaction of fury, and you want to believe, “he never listens, he only cares about what he wants, or other such unhappy thoughts, that you must, for your own well being, decide to change your mind. At first it can feel as unnatural as waxing yourself or jumping out of an airplane, but with time it gets easier and not only will you feel better, but your outside circumstances will begin to reflect your inner changes. Choosing to be happy means never making another person, place or thing responsible for your happiness again, and that my friends, is a far cry from how the masses live.
As a New Years gift to you, I offer 3 Steps for an amazingly Happy 2009:
Step 1. Ask yourself often, “How am I feeling?”
Our feelings are the best GPS system on the planet and since the goal is to feel joy, fulfillment, and peace, the only way to tell if we’re on track is to check in with ourselves regularly. If your answer to this question is anything less than “good”, determine what you’re thinking about, imagining, or doing that is creating the feeling. The key to this step is gaining awareness of your emotions moment by moment. This can be tricky since many of us have gotten so used to feeling low levels of aggravation, boredom, or confusion, that we barely recognize it anymore.
Hint: Put Post It notes wherever you are most often to remind yourself.
Step 2. Determine Your Focus. “What do You want?”
Are you focusing on the problem or the solution, a need or a want? Once this becomes clear, it’s a no brainer for all you Law of Attraction enthusiasts. Where our attention goes, the energy flows after-all and happiness is the goal right? Imagine what the ideal outcome to the current situation would be and be willing to let go of the mental imagery, thoughts or behaviors that are contributing to the opposite. Changing your mind about something you’re attached to "being right" about can be challenging to say the least, but I’ve found that it’s those beliefs that seem to cause the most misery.
Hint: If you're feeling bad, what you want is usually the opposite of what you’re currently thinking about.
Step 3.Take A Step in the right direction
Even the smallest step away from what you don’t want creates momentum and movement towards what you do want. The awareness in itself is enough to get the ball rolling in the right direction. Every time you catch yourself stinkin thinkin and reach for even a slightly better thought, you’re one step closer to all the love, joy and fulfillment that you could possibly want!
Happy trails!
Misty
I realized only after attaining most everything on my “Perfect Life List”, that the many hours spent affirming and vision boarding my brains out had somehow not created what I thought they would. Sooner than later the joy that accompanied any success I achieved would eventually fade and I would find myself answering a friendly “How are you? With pretty good, fine or okay. I lived where I wanted to live, I loved who I wanted to love, had more money in the bank than I’d ever had, but still my life felt just …okay and that...was totally... NOT okay! What I really wanted, and falsely believed those achievements would bring me, was the ever elusive goal behind my goals… the lasting feeling of happiness.
One day, after the sale of my home, I sat in my new house by the ocean, stressing about how to best manage my money. I didn’t want to lose it and be seen as one of those irresponsible “dummies” I’d heard about in social circles and on TV. Then suddenly it hit me how crazy I was. I had spent most of my life afraid I’d never get enough money to take time off and live in an amazing location, and here I was, living my dream, afraid I would lose it? It was crazy! The worry didn’t go away, it had just traded circumstances.
After that, I finally got what all the books and seminars had been talking about when they said, “Happiness is a choice.” As long as I allowed conditioned thought patterns to focus my attention on things that didn’t make me happy, like imaging myself homeless after squandering all my money for example, I would never be happy! So right then and there, my inner world became the priority of my life. I would never be able to control everything that was happening “out there” but I could certainly control what thoughts I let run my life. For a control freak and happiness seeker like me, this was great news!
So, for the last couple of years I’ve devoted my life to cutting out the middle man so to speak. I’ve chosen to bypass the endless pursuit of achievements and material “filler” and go straight for the good stuff…the feelings! It’s been a challenging road, as those of you who are on it will attest, but for any self respecting idealist, it’s the only way to fly. Choosing to be happy isn’t as easy as you might think. It means when your boyfriend triggers an old reaction of fury, and you want to believe, “he never listens, he only cares about what he wants, or other such unhappy thoughts, that you must, for your own well being, decide to change your mind. At first it can feel as unnatural as waxing yourself or jumping out of an airplane, but with time it gets easier and not only will you feel better, but your outside circumstances will begin to reflect your inner changes. Choosing to be happy means never making another person, place or thing responsible for your happiness again, and that my friends, is a far cry from how the masses live.
As a New Years gift to you, I offer 3 Steps for an amazingly Happy 2009:
Step 1. Ask yourself often, “How am I feeling?”
Our feelings are the best GPS system on the planet and since the goal is to feel joy, fulfillment, and peace, the only way to tell if we’re on track is to check in with ourselves regularly. If your answer to this question is anything less than “good”, determine what you’re thinking about, imagining, or doing that is creating the feeling. The key to this step is gaining awareness of your emotions moment by moment. This can be tricky since many of us have gotten so used to feeling low levels of aggravation, boredom, or confusion, that we barely recognize it anymore.
Hint: Put Post It notes wherever you are most often to remind yourself.
Step 2. Determine Your Focus. “What do You want?”
Are you focusing on the problem or the solution, a need or a want? Once this becomes clear, it’s a no brainer for all you Law of Attraction enthusiasts. Where our attention goes, the energy flows after-all and happiness is the goal right? Imagine what the ideal outcome to the current situation would be and be willing to let go of the mental imagery, thoughts or behaviors that are contributing to the opposite. Changing your mind about something you’re attached to "being right" about can be challenging to say the least, but I’ve found that it’s those beliefs that seem to cause the most misery.
Hint: If you're feeling bad, what you want is usually the opposite of what you’re currently thinking about.
Step 3.Take A Step in the right direction
Even the smallest step away from what you don’t want creates momentum and movement towards what you do want. The awareness in itself is enough to get the ball rolling in the right direction. Every time you catch yourself stinkin thinkin and reach for even a slightly better thought, you’re one step closer to all the love, joy and fulfillment that you could possibly want!
Happy trails!
Misty
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