High on Happiness

Archive for January, 2010

One of the most powerful keys to experiencing greater happiness is opening your heart to trust.  In a world riddled with trauma and uncertainties, that may seem easier said than done.  But to tell you the truth, it’s simply a decision you make.

Oh, I could give you a thousand reasons why trusting is a logical, reasonable, practical choice.  I could point out the breathtaking order that underlies everything—the fact that the earth continues to spin, and so gives us sunshine and starlight every day, or that the seasons keep coming in order.  But you can find reasons for yourself if you need them.

The fact remains that to trust is a choice.  And in what, exactly, do you place this trust?  In the idea that everything is okay somehow and is in the process of working toward greater goodness and healing and perfection all the time, whether we can see it or not.

Trust in the reality of love and in the notion that it underlies and supports everything in existence.  Trust in your essential safety and wholeness, whatever your circumstances currently may be.  Trust that you matter, whether anyone else seems to notice or not.  Trust that the great mystery in which we live contains all the answers and reasons and meanings, even though they may dance beyond our perception or understanding.  Trust that you were meant to taste joy in your life and that life automatically gives you permission to feel it.

All it takes to make it yours is a yes, regardless of what the past has held or how lacking it’s been in your experience until now.

Can’t you feel the beauty in the possibility of living in trust?  The empowerment of it?  The freedom?  Go ahead.  Choose it, and let the happiness of it flow.

It’s true and it’s real and it comes on strong. When happiness starts rising from your soul, it comes on mighty.  It rolls up like thunder, laughing its joy through your whole sky.

It crashes down the hills of your illusions and lands at your feet, giving you something solid to walk on.

Grab yourself some chunks of it, tumble it around inside yourself for awhile, and watch it reveal its gems.

Carry smooth pieces of it in your pocket to finger when worry comes by.

Wear strings of it around your neck and it makes you beautiful.

Mount bits of it on your fingers and it gives you sparkle and power.

It’s magical stuff, happiness, like love captured in time.  Happiness rocks.

When you boil them all down, all the components of happiness, it comes to this:  Happiness is loving life and the Source from which life springs.  When you’re in love with life, you see, happiness becomes your natural state of being.  You don’t need to understand it, although it often fills you with boundless curiosity.  You don’t have to wrap it in dogmas or beliefs; it’s enough to feel it coursing through your veins.

Happiness isn’t something you have to find, or build, or discover, or create, even though we talk about it that way.  It’s like air.  It’s everywhere, inside you and out.  And all you have to do to experience more of it, to feel it more deeply, more fully and more often, is to allow yourself to be in love with your life.  Start there.

You don’t have to love all of your life right now.  Finding just one good piece of it to celebrate is plenty.  And if there’s just one good piece right now, celebrate it for all you’re worth.  Tell it how glad you are about it, and how it’s the best part of your life.

After awhile, it will ask you if you haven’t noticed this other part, over here, and how it’s pretty wonderful, too.  And now you’ll have two things, and then four, and sixteen, and thirty-two, and pretty soon you’ll start loving parts of the person next to you and the cat and the bus driver and the grocery store clerk and the way the sun shines and how children laugh.  And one morning, you’ll wake up and realize that, doggone it, you’re happy.

Now maybe you’re in such sad shape that you can’t even find one part of you to love right now.  That’s okay.  Happiness doesn’t care.  It’s going to hang around anyway.  You can start by picking out someone in the world who’s not so bad, someone you see maybe every day, and just make it a point to say, “Hi,” and give them a little smile.

If you can’t find a person to smile at, find an animal or a plant.  The point is to let your love out, because love is what happiness sails on.  And every time you let a little love out, happiness goes whistling through.

So breathe love in: celebrate yourself.  Breathe it out: celebrate something outside you.  And if you’re very, very still, you’ll hear the whisper of happiness riding on its flow.

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Creativity loves the happiness ride, the way it sloshes over the horizon to see what’s there . . .

Open. Spontaneous. Playful. Free.

The way it slides under fences . . .

Curious. Inventive. Daring. Bold.

How it plays with new connections . . .

Fresh.  Constructive. Original. Visionary.

How bright it is . . .

Ingenious. Illumined.  Resourceful. Inspired.

It’s creativity’s ultimate stimulus, its elixir par excellence.  It carries the spark that sets creativity free.

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With words and acts of kindness, happiness rains its gentle joy into all the world’s loneliness and pain.  “Here,” it says to parched hearts, “Have a drink of relief.  Taste its hope.  Know that you are seen and loved.”

With little pearls of kindness, happiness celebrates friendships and gifts strangers, in gratitude for their sheer, wondrous presence in the world.

As it pours out in kindness, requiring no merit, extending itself to all, happiness shows its grace.  As kindness, it dissolves barriers and extends connection.  It invites the recognition of relatedness, one heart to another, to another.

Such is its joy.  Such is its reason for being.

Happiness is a message from your heart telling you that you are on the right track.  The lack of happiness doesn’t always mean you are on the wrong track, however; it may mean you have simply forgotten to allow happiness into what you’re doing.

For example, a friend of mine who is a life coach was telling me about his first client.  She was unhappy with her job and wanted help in finding work that would give her more satisfaction and joy.

Over the course of their work together, as the woman began to look more deeply at the kinds of things she enjoyed doing, she began to realize that her current job gave her every opportunity to do them.  Her dissatisfaction with her position was nothing more than a misalignment of her focus.  By looking continuously at the parts of her job that bored or irritated her, she had expanded her experience of boredom and irritation so much that happiness had no room to dance.

As she began to look at how much she actually enjoyed doing the kinds of things her job required and recognized how good she was at doing them, her happiness with her job began to grow.  Her new cheerfulness spilled over into her relationships with her coworkers, and now she is thriving and wholly loves her work.

The lesson happiness was bringing to her wasn’t that she needed a new job, but that she needed to look at her work from a different perspective, to see the potential for experiencing happiness that was already there.

Had she discovered, on the other hand, that her job wasn’t allowing her to exercise her strengths and talents, that it was limiting her opportunities to be at her best, then it would, indeed, have been time to move on.

The point is that life is intended to be joyful and the depth of happiness you are experiencing in any aspect of your life tells you whether you are following the path your higher self would have you walk or whether you would benefit from a change of direction or a different point of view.  Invite your joy; make room for it to dance.

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“It only takes one spark to set the whole forest ablaze.” ~Deepak Chopra

A single smile can light a room.  Today, be a light in the midst of the world’s darkness.

A single act of kindness can melt a frozen heart.  Today, break through someone’s isolation.  Let him know he is seen.  Let her know she is heard.

One drop of gratitude can set off ripples of love.  Today, shower your thanks liberally on all who contribute to your joy and well-being.

One little laugh can turn everything to play.  Go lightly through the world today and let delight be your song.

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At it’s sweetest, happiness is so simple.

Here’s the recipe:  look out at the world through eyes of love and smile.

How like happiness to be such a riddle!  A state, but never static; the essence of peace, but never still; sought but never lost; timeless, but always new.

And that’s the fun of happiness—the way it wears so many faces, its countless flavors and rainbow of hues.

Happiness floats from the depths of truth in bubbles of joy, alive and dynamic as truth itself.  It’s the motion of love, the whoosh of the creative source, the laughter of being expressing itself in matter and time and transcending them.

Happiness is the dancing flame that clothes truth’s fire, the sparkle of the sun on the sea.  It’s the rolling of the seasons.  It’s the planet’s tilt and spin.  It’s the song of life living itself in infinite, ever-changing forms.

And right here and now, it’s you, saying yes to life and to all its astonishing illusions.  It’s you, eating the mystery of it like cornflakes and reveling in its crunch.  It’s you, loving it.  It’s where you come from and what you’re made of, whether you get the riddle or not.

When you open the window to happiness, freshness breezes in.  Suddenly its morning, with sunshine spilling all over the floor.

Happiness renews you, dissolving the weary and worn in its light, recharging your energies, reviving your spirit.

It glides smiling through the curtains of your mind carrying the scent of newly laundered hope and birdsong notes of new possibilities.

Happiness enlivens and invigorates you, sparkling through you like dew on the dawn-kissed flowers.

It lifts you from night’s darkness and restores your strength.  It reawakens your determination and will.  It whispers reminders of who you truly are.

All this, for opening the window.  For practicing your smile, for looking for the good, for offering your kindness, for forgiving and letting go.  All this, just for offering your gratitude and appreciation, for noticing beauty, for leaning into truth.  All this.  What a deal.