Best Advice: Choose Happiness

Posted by Debbie Dickerson in Advice, Life, Mind, Spirit

If you are looking anywhere besides within yourself for happiness, you will be on the never ending search! Happiness is not something that is just out of your reach, it is not something that is given to specific social classes, and it has absolutely nothing to do with luck! Happiness is yours for the taking! It never runs out and it costs nothing to have but everything to lose!

We live in a world where people consume mass amounts of pills that they nickname “happiness pills.” As a society, we medicate ourselves instead of rectify issues. People began to buy the idea that you don’t actually have to do anything to work through your emotions, just take this pill(s) and all will be well. In my opinion, our society has gone to hell in a hand bag since pills became the new cure all! Kids are killing themselves in mass quantities, or God forbid, killing other people. Adults are flippin crazy, stuck in some mediocre acceptance trap that they read about. All of this is due to chasing one emotion…happiness. The problem is that all a pill does is cover up your issues, it doesn’t solve them or allow you to solve them.

BREAKING NEWS: SOMETIMES LIFE SUCKS! YOU MUST WORK THROUGH IT AND GROW FROM IT. YOU HAVE TO KNOW SADNESS TO RECOGNIZE HAPPINESS!

I am a Life Enhancement Coach and I get asked often, “How can I be happy when this happens and that happens?” I always answer them by saying, “It is hard when life is throwing you curves, however, nobody said it would be easy, they just said it would be worth it! Happiness is a choice you make, regardless of outside circumstances. It is not an easy concept to grasp, especially if you are going through turmoil currently, however, once you understand and make the decision, miraculously, the turmoil clears away!”

A couple of things tend to be excuses many people use to stay in the ruts they are currently in. The first one is that they have so much crap going on in their lives, they have to figure out everything first…then they can try to squeeze happiness in. The next excuse is that they don’t deserve happiness, it is for others. The last one is that they will be happy once they achieve their long list of must have’s before I allow myself and everybody else around me to be happy. If any of these sound familiar, give yourself a solid wakeup call! Stop waiting and start living. If you are not choosing to be happy, you are not fully living your life.

Throughout my Coaching experience, I have put together a “How to choose happiness” action plan. I am going to share a few of those actions with you in hopes that it will ignite the fire within you and will help you to decide happiness is yours, today…right now!

For the next 5 days, follow this plan every day. If you veer off of it, pull yourself back on it. Do not give up, it is your time to make a change! Each day, you will do that activity plus the previous ones (On day 5, you will be doing 5 activities).

Day 1 – Wake up and in the mirror say 5 things you are grateful for. Make one of them that you are grateful for choosing happiness. This is not a long drawn out thing. Get to a mirror and spit out the 5 things and move on with your day.

Day 2 – Take notice of what ignites your happiness and what extinguishes it. (Work, mate, family, self…) Either write it down or record it, doesn’t matter the method, just that you acknowledge these events. Most people are just going through the motions of life and pay zero attention to what is really going on in their lives. They go from point A to point B in a robot like manner and simply assume that this is their life, period. Pay attention to your surroundings, who you surround yourself with plays a HUGE factor in how you feel about yourself and what you expect from yourself.

Day 3 – Make everything positive. Yes, of course, this is difficult but so what! You cannot live a happy life without being a positive person. It is your choice to keep your thoughts, actions, and words positive. When you begin to think a negative thought about yourself or somebody else, simply stop yourself and find something positive to replace it with. It doesn’t matter how far you need to dig to find the positive…just find it. You will begin to notice all the negativity that you have allowed into your life and will start feeling lighter once you remove it and replace it with positives.

Day 4 – Take control of your life. Although it is much easier to blame everybody else, at some point we need to look at how we can be accountable for our own actions/reactions. We often react to others or circumstances in a way that adds fuel to the fire, instead of putting the fire out. Your reaction is in your control, and only your control. From this point forth, when a situation comes up, ask yourself, “Is this worthy of me giving my happiness up? What is the positive to this? How can I positively affect it?” Once you have answered these questions, the situation will have calmed down and you will react to it with a level head. When you are in control, situations tend to no longer get out of hand.

Day 5 – Choose and accept happiness in your life. You deserve happiness and are the only one that can give and take it from you. Making the choice to be happy means that what other people do or say, no longer pulls the strings of your happiness. You are the only person that can control you. Making the choice to be happy means that who you are right now is enough for you to be happy with. Of course you should always strive to be better tomorrow than you are today, but right now, you are exactly who, what, and where you are supposed to be. Choosing to be happy is a daily, sometimes hourly decision that has to be made. It isn’t just going to land on you, you have to grab it! Think about how long you have allowed yourself to choose not to be happy, that probably hasn’t worked out too super for you, right? Now is the perfect time for you to make the choice to be happy and allow yourself to live your life fully!

Everybody has things in their lives, either in the present or the past that could justify being miserable, but why waste time on that crap? Making the choice today to be happy will assure yourself that your tomorrows will be happy because you have given no other options! You absolutely deserve happiness and those you love deserve to see you and experience you happy! Do not let one more minute pass without being the most amazing you that you can be! #bestadvice #inspiration

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